An effort was made to evaluate the potential usefulness of a peptide vaccine in improving the growth performance of farm animals. It was previously reported that a murine PS-7.6 monoclonal antibody (mAb) which was specific to porcine GH (pGH) enhanced the growth-promoting activity of pGH in an experimental hypophysectomized rat model. Additional data from a epitope mapping study suggested that PS-7.6 mAb recognized a pGH fragment corresponding to an amino acid sequence 54-95. In this report, therefore, a peptide pGH(54-95) was synthesized in an attempt to induce PS-7.6-like antibodies in swine. It was demonstrated that the peptide pGH(54-95) competed with PS-7.6 mAb for the binding to radioactive pGH in a competition radioimmunoassay and also caused pigs to elicit polyclonal antibodies immunoreactive to pGH protein. The association and dissociation rate constants of the swine antibody to pGH were 1.9 x 10(2) M-1 s-1 and 3.2 x 10(-4)s-1 respectively, thus producing an overall binding affinity of Kd = 1.6 x 10(-6) M. The swine antibody partially competed with murine PS-7.6 mAb for the binding to pGH, suggesting that the pGH-recognizing sites for both antibodies might be closely related. The biological effect of the swine antibody was examined in hypophysectomized rats and shown to significantly augment pGH activity in promoting the growth of these GH-deficient animals. The present findings suggest that a synthetic peptide may be developed as a potential growth vaccine for swine to generate antibodies capable of enhancing the effectiveness of endogenous pGH.