title: Virus-like particles as a highly efficient vaccine platform: diversity of targets and production systems and advances in clinical development.
abstract: Virus-like particles (VLPs) are a class of subunit vaccines that differentiate themselves from soluble recombinant antigens by stronger protective immunogenicity associated with the VLP structure. Like parental viruses, VLPs can be either non-enveloped or enveloped, and they can form following expression of one or several viral structural proteins in a recombinant heterologous system. Depending on the complexity of the VLP, it can be produced in either a prokaryotic or eukaryotic expression system using target-encoding recombinant vectors, or in some cases can be assembled in cell-free conditions. To date, a wide variety of VLP-based candidate vaccines targeting various viral, bacterial, parasitic and fungal pathogens, as well as non-infectious diseases, have been produced in different expression systems. Some VLPs have entered clinical development and a few have been licensed and commercialized. This article reviews VLP-based vaccines produced in different systems, their immunogenicity in animal models and their status in clinical development.
authors.affiliation: Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology, Newark, DE 19711, USA.
authors.forename: Natasha
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kushnir
authors.forename: Stephen J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Streatfield
authors.forename: Vidadi
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Yusibov
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D058425:Vaccines, Virus-Like Particle / Q000276:immunology*; D014765:Viral Vaccines / Q000276:immunology*; D022701:Virosomes / Q000276:immunology
chemical_list: D058425:Vaccines, Virus-Like Particle; D014765:Viral Vaccines; D022701:Virosomes