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. 2011 Dec 16;54(11):1042–1047. doi: 10.1007/s11427-011-4244-0

Design and immunogenicity assessment of HIV-1 virus-like particles as a candidate vaccine

XiZhen Zhang 1,2, XiaoDan Wang 1, DongHai Zhao 3, XiangYu Meng 1,2, XingHong Zhao 1,2, XiangHui Yu 1,2,✉, Wei Kong 1,2,✉
PMCID: PMC7089044  PMID: 22173311

Abstract

The rapid growth of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic makes it a high priority to develop an effective vaccine. Since a live attenuated or inactivated HIV vaccine is not likely to be approved for clinical application due to safety concerns, HIV virus like particles (VLPs) offer an attractive alternative because they are considered safer since they lack viral genome. We got a stable eukaryotic cell line by G418 resistance selection, engineered to express the HIV-1 structure protein Gag and Env efficiently and stably. We confirmed the presence of Gag and Env proteins in the cell culture supernatant and that they could self-assemble into VLPs. These VLPs were found to be able to elicit specific humoral and cellular immune response after immunization without any adjuvant.

Keywords: HIV-1, cotransfection, stable cell line, virus-like particles (VLPs), vaccine

Footnotes

This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

Contributor Information

XiangHui Yu, Email: xianghui@jlu.edu.cn.

Wei Kong, Email: weikong@jlu.edu.cn.

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