Persistent infection with human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV-16) is strongly associated with the development of cervical cancer. Neutralizing epitopes present on the major coat protein, L1, have not been well characterized, although three neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) had been identified by using HPV-16 pseudovirions (R. B. Roden et al., J. Virol. 71:6247-6252, 1997). Here, two of th...

BACKGROUND Bluetongue virus (BTV) is an economically important, arthropod borne, emerging pathogen in Europe, causing disease mainly in sheep and cattle. Routine vaccination for bluetongue would require the ability to distinguish between vaccinated and infected individuals (DIVA). Current vaccines are effective but are not DIVA. Virus-like particles (VLPs) are highly immunogenic structural mimi...

The role of viral structural proteins in the initiation of adaptive immune responses is poorly understood. To address this issue, we focused on the effect of noninfectious papillomavirus-like particles (VLPs) on dendritic cell (DC) activation. We found that murine bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (BMDCs) effectively bound and rapidly internalized bovine papillomavirus VLPS: Exposure to fully...

Controlling the cross-presentation of exogenous Ags to CD8+ T cells represents a major step for designing new vaccination strategies. Whereas several recombinant pseudo-viral particles have been used as delivery systems for triggering potent CTL responses to heterologous exogenous Ags, the adjuvant properties of virus-like particles (VLPs) themselves were little questioned. Here, we analyzed th...

Protein nanoparticles such as virus-like particles (VLPs) can be obtained by recombinant protein production of viral capsid proteins and spontaneous self-assembling in cell factories. Contrarily to infective viral particles, VLPs lack infective viral genome while retaining important viral properties like cellular tropism and intracellular delivery of internalized molecules. These properties mak...

Recently, it has been shown that HCV core proteins (HCcAg) with C-terminal deletions assemble in vitro into virus-like particles (VLPs) in the presence of structured RNA molecules. Results presented in this work showed that a truncated HCcAg variant covering the first 120 aa (HCcAg.120) with a 32 aa N-terminal fusion peptide (6xHistag-Xpressepitope) interacts with plasmid DNA vaccine. Interesti...

Norovirus (NV) is an important human pathogen that causes epidemic acute nonbacterial gastroenteritis worldwide. Because of the lack of a cell culture system or an animal model for this virus, studies of drinking water treatment such as separation and disinfection processes are still hampered. We successfully estimated NV removal performance during a coagulation-rapid sand filtration process by...

Most acute gastroenteritis (AGE) outbreaks and sporadic cases in developing countries are attributable to infection by human norovirus (HuNoV), the enteric virus mainly transmitted via fecal-contaminated water. However, it has been challenging study HuNoV due lack of suitable systems cultivate replicate virus, hindering development treatments vaccines. Researchers have using virus-like particle...