Chikungunya vaccine is shelf stable

Abstract

Pascal Fender was working on a new nanoparticle-based vaccine platform when—crucially—he forgot a sample in the pocket of his lab coat. When the French National Center for Scientific Research virologist rediscovered the sample a few months later, electron microscopy revealed that the particles were still intact—a surprising result that may lead to new shelf-stable synthetic vaccines. Now, a team of researchers including Fender has used these particles to make a vaccine against chikungunya that’s stable at temperatures up to 45 °C (Sci. Adv. 2019, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw2853). The new platform is a virus-like particle (VLP) derived from a human adenovirus strain. Unlike a traditional vaccine, a VLP contains no genetic material. Instead, viral proteins self-assemble around a hollow core. “It kind of looks like a virus,” explains University of Bristol synthetic biologist Imre Berger, “but it’s not.” Berger, who directs BrisSynBio, the Bristol Synthetic Biology Research Centre, co-led the new work.