Development of a Platform for Noncovalent Coupling of Full Antigens to Tobacco Etch Virus-Like Particles by Means of Coiled-Coil Oligomerization Motifs

Abstract

Virus-like particles are excellent inducers of the adaptive immune response of humans and are presently being used as scaffolds for the presentation of foreign peptides and antigens derived from infectious microorganisms for subunit vaccine development. The most common approaches for peptide and antigen presentation are translational fusions and chemical coupling, but some alternatives that seek to simplify the coupling process have been reported recently. In this work, an alternative platform for coupling full antigens to virus-like particles is presented. Heterodimerization motifs inserted in both Tobacco etch virus coat protein and green fluorescent protein directed the coupling process by simple mixing, and the obtained complexes were easily taken up by a macrophage cell line.

Identifying Key Drivers of Efficient B Cell Responses: On the Role of T Help, Antigen-Organization, and Toll-like Receptor Stimulation for Generating a Neutralizing Anti-Dengue Virus Response

“…These issues may arise due to the molecular weight of the antigen, its charge, or other sequence peculiarities, including repeats, pseudo-termination sequences, or rare tRNA codons. To address these, various strategies have been developed, including the expression of mosaic VLPs [ 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ], or the binding of antigens by chemical [ 39 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 ], enzymatic [ 57 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 ], or physical [ 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 ] methods.…”