Production of Japanese Encephalitis Virus-Like Particles Using Insect Cell Expression Systems

Abstract

Virus-like particles (VLPs) can be produced via the expression of virus surface proteins that self-assemble into particulate structures in recombinant protein expression systems. Expression of the DNA fragment encoding the Japanese encephalitis (JE) virus prM signal peptide, the precursor (prM) of the viral membrane protein (M), and the envelope glycoprotein (E) allows the production of a secretory form of VLPs. Expression systems that use lepidopteran insect cells, such as the baculovirus-insect cell system and stably transformed insect cells, can be used for the efficient production of JE VLPs. This chapter describes the production of JE VLPs from stably transformed lepidopteran insect cells.

Dengue virus-like particles mimic the antigenic properties of the infectious dengue virus envelope

“…VLPs, often, share structural similarities and physicochemical features of the native virus, but are superior in terms of safety, and ease of production and purification [ 10 ]. VLPs have proven to be effective vaccine antigens in preclinical or early stage clinical studies with different enveloped viral pathogens such as West Nile virus, Tick-borne encephalitis virus, Japanese encephalitis virus, Zika virus, Chikungunya virus, Influenza virus and Dengue virus [ 10 – 17 ]. For DENV VLPs, no data is available on the display and presentation of epitopes of varying complexity recognized by human neutralizing antibodies.…”

Recent Advances in the Development of Virus-Like Particle-Based Flavivirus Vaccines

“…Flavivirus VLPs are relatively smaller as compared to the intact virions, and they can be produced in a large variety of expression platforms, including yeast, plant, insect cells, and mammalian cells [48][49][50][51][52]. VLPs have proven to be effective and safe vaccine antigens in preclinical or early-stage clinical studies with ZIKV, DENV, WNV, and JEV [52][53][54][55][56].…”

Development of a novel virus-like particle-based vaccine for preventing tick-borne encephalitis virus infection

“…Notably, the small size of VLPs allows rapid diffusion through lymph nodes and facilitates antigen presentation for the induction of B and T cells. VLPs have been employed for investigating the function, morphogenesis, and structure of proteins, and for generating vaccines against flaviviruses ( Liu et al., 2014 ; Taylor et al., 2016 ; Yamaji and Konishi, 2016 ; Boigard et al., 2017 ), which can be produced in yeast, plant, insect, or mammalian cells ( Liu et al., 2005 ; Urakami et al., 2017 ; Metz et al., 2018 ). Incorporating the C protein into the VLPs can increase the numbers of epitopes, as demonstrated on Zika VLPs ( Garg et al., 2017 ; Lin et al., 2018 ).…”