Chimaeric plant-produced bluetongue virus particles as potential vaccine candidates.

Bluetongue virus (BTV) causes bluetongue disease in ruminants and sheep. The current live attenuated and inactivated vaccines available for prevention pose several risks, and there is thus a need for vaccines that are safer, economically viable, and effective against multiple circulating serotypes. This work describes the development of recombinant virus-like particle (VLP) vaccine candidates in plants, which are assembled by co-expression of the four BTV serotype 8 major structural proteins.

Development of a dual vaccine against East Coast fever and lumpy skin disease.

East Coast fever is an acute bovine disease caused by the apicomplexan parasite and is regarded as one of the most important tick-vectored diseases in Africa. The current vaccination procedure has many drawbacks, as it involves the use of live sporozoites. As a novel vaccination strategy, we have constructed the recombinant lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV) named LSDV-SODis-p67HA-BLV-Gag, encoding a modified form of the p67 surface antigen (p67HA), as well as the bovine leukemia virus (BLV) gag gene for the formation of virus-like particles (VLPs) to potentially enhance p67 immunogenicity.

A plant-produced SARS-CoV-2 spike protein elicits heterologous immunity in hamsters.

Molecular farming of vaccines has been heralded as a cheap, safe and scalable production platform. In reality, however, differences in the plant biosynthetic machinery, compared to mammalian cells, can complicate the production of viral glycoproteins. Remodelling the secretory pathway presents an opportunity to support key post-translational modifications, and to tailor aspects of glycosylation and glycosylation-directed folding.