Biomimetic inorganic camouflage circumvents antibody-dependent enhancement of infection† †Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: 10.1039/c7sc03868b

Pre-existing antibodies can aggravate disease during subsequent infection or vaccination via the mechanism of antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) of infection. Herein, using dengue virus (DENV) as a model, we present a versatile surface-camouflage strategy to obtain a virus core-calcium phosphate shell hybrid by self-templated biomineralization. The shelled DENV stealthily avoids recognition by pre-existing antibodies under extracellular conditions, resulting in the efficient abrogation of the ADE of infection both in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, the nanoshell can spontaneously degrade under intracellular conditions to restore the virus activity and immunogenicity due to its pH-sensitive behaviour. This work demonstrates that the biomimetic material shell can significantly improve the administration safety and potency of the DENV vaccine, which provides the promising prospect of chemically designed virus-material hybrids for immune evasion.