Abstract
Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) infects 2% of the world’s population and is the leading cause of liver disease and liver transplantation. It poses a serious and growing worldwide public health problem that will only be partially addressed with the introduction of new antiviral therapies. However, these treatments will not prevent re-infection particularly in high risk populations. The introduction of a HCV vaccine has been predicted, using simulation models in a high risk population, to have a significant effect on reducing the incidence of HCV. A vaccine with 50 to 80% efficacy targeted to high-risk intravenous drug users could dramatically reduce HCV incidence in this population. Virus like particles (VLPs) are composed of viral structural proteins which self-assemble into non-infectious particles that lack genetic material and resemble native viruses. Thus, VLPs represent a safe and highly immunogenic vaccine delivery platform able to induce potent adaptive immune responses. Currently, many VLP-based vaccines have entered clinical trials, while licensed VLP vaccines for hepatitis B virus (HBV) and human papilloma virus (HPV) have been in use for many years. The HCV core, E1 and E2 proteins can self-assemble into immunogenic VLPs while inclusion of HCV antigens into heterogenous (chimeric) VLPs is also a promising approach. These VLPs are produced using different expression systems such as bacterial, yeast, mammalian, plant, or insect cells. Here, this paper will review HCV VLP-based vaccines and their immunogenicity in animal models as well as the different expression systems used in their production.
Highlights
Hepatitis C Virus is an enveloped positive sense single-stranded RNA virus that infects more than 170 million people (∼2% of the world’s population) (Bartenschlager et al, 2011)
It is estimated that approximately ∼1% of those diagnosed with hepatitis C virus infection are treated annually in Australia (Commonwealth of Australia, 2014), while the global pool of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) infected persons is increased by 3–4 million new infections each year (Gower et al, 2014)
Attempts should be directed toward the optimization of the delivery methods of DNA-based Virus like particles (VLPs) vaccines and the addition or co-delivery of novel genetic adjuvants for maximum immune stimulation. These results show that the plasmo-retroVLPs is a flexible platform to induce humoral and cellular immunity after homologous or heterologous prime-boost immunization and with further improvements, this strategy could be used as a Recombinant Papaya Mosaic Virus-Based HCV VLPs
Summary
Hepatitis C Virus is an enveloped positive sense single-stranded RNA virus that infects more than 170 million people (∼2% of the world’s population) (Bartenschlager et al, 2011). Hepatitis C Virus-LPs that were produced in mammalian cells using an adenovirus-based system generated particles which were reported to resemble the native virions morphologically (Chua et al, 2012; Kumar et al, 2016) Vaccination with these adenovirus-derived HCV-LPs in combination with an anionic self-adjuvanting lipopeptide containing the Toll-like receptor (TLR) 2 agonist Pam2Cys (E8Pam2Cys) resulted in significant HCV-LP and E2-specific antibody responses mice (Chua et al, 2012). Vaccination of human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-A2 transgenic mice with this vaccine generated higher HCV-LP-specific IFN-γ-mediated responses compared to non-adjuvanted HCV-LPs (Chua et al, 2012)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
