It has been shown previously that immunization of animals with recombinant virus-like particles (VLPs) consisting of the viral capsid proteins L1 or L1 plus L2 protected animals against experimental viral challenge. However, none of these experimental models addresses the issue of whether systemic immunization with VLPs elicits a neutralizing antibody response in the genital mucosa. Such a resp...

Attenuated strains of Salmonella are attractive live vaccine candidates for eliciting mucosal as well as systemic immune responses. The ability to induce immune responses in the reproductive tract may be critical for the effectiveness of a prophylactic vaccine against genital human papillomaviruses (HPV), which are important etiologic agents in the development of cervical cancer. To examine the...

The HPV L1 VLP vaccines are immensely important developments in public health and the benefits that they promise are immense, offering the opportunity to prevent, in the long term, 80% of cervical cancers, 60% of vulval cancers and 80% of anal cancers in women. In the short to medium term they will prevent at least 90% of genital warts and have a major impact on the incidence of high grade CIN,...

To develop a plant expression system for the production of the human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV16) vaccine, we investigated whether the HPV16 L1 protein can be expressed in tobacco plants and whether it can be used as the cheapest form of edible vaccine. The HPV16 L1 coding sequence was amplified by PCR using specific primers from the plasmid pGEM-T-HPV16 containing the template sequence, and ...

The currently available nonavalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine exploits the highly antigenic L1 major capsid protein to promote high-titer neutralizing antibodies, but is limited to the HPV types included in the vaccine since the responses are highly type-specific. The limited cross-protection offered by the L1 virus-like particle (VLP) vaccine warrants further investigation into cross-p...

HPV prophylactic vaccination based on VLPs was implemented 7 years ago and has now shown a high degree of efficiency to reduce HPV-induced lesions. Moreover, it was shown that HPV-derived virus-like particles or pseudovirions could be used as gene therapy vectors. As a consequence, characterization of the antigenic structure of HPV capsids is crucial for designing future HPV vaccines with bette...

BACKGROUND Although DNA plasmid and virus-like particle (VLP) vaccines have been individually tested against highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 viruses, the combination of both vaccines into a heterologous prime-boost strategy against HPAI H5N1 viruses has not been reported before. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We constructed DNA plasmid encoding H5HA (A/Shenzhen/406H/06, subclade...

BACKGROUND Current human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines that are based on virus-like particles (VLPs) of the major capsid protein L1 largely elicit HPV type-specific antibody responses. In contrast, immunization with the HPV minor capsid protein L2 elicits antibodies that are broadly cross-neutralizing, suggesting that a vaccine targeting L2 could provide more comprehensive protection against in...

Capsomeres are considered to be an alternative to viruslike particle (VLP)-based vaccines as they can be produced in prokaryotic expression systems. So far, no detailed side-by-side comparison of VLPs and capsomeres has been performed. In the present study, we immunized mice with insect cell-derived human papillomavirus type 16 VLPs and capsomeres. VLPs induced consistently higher antibody tite...