Architectural insight into inovirus-associated vectors (IAVs) and development of IAV-based vaccines inducing humoral and cellular responses: implications in HIV-1 vaccines.

Inovirus-associated vectors (IAVs) are engineered, non-lytic, filamentous bacteriophages that are assembled primarily from thousands of copies of the major coat protein gp8 and just five copies of each of the four minor coat proteins gp3, gp6, gp7 and gp9. Inovirus display studies have shown that the architecture of inoviruses makes all coat proteins of the inoviral particle accessible to the outside. This particular feature of IAVs allows foreign antigenic peptides to be displayed on the outer surface of the virion fused to its coat proteins and for more than two decades has been exploited in many applications including antibody or peptide display libraries, drug design, and vaccine development against infectious and non-infectious diseases.

HIV-1 vaccine strategies utilizing viral vectors including antigen- displayed inoviral vectors.

Antigen-presenting viral vectors have been extensively used as vehicles for the presentation of antigens to the immune system in numerous vaccine strategies. Particularly in HIV vaccine development efforts, two main viral vectors have been used as antigen carriers: (a) live attenuated vectors and (b) virus-like particles (VLPs); the former, although highly effective in animal studies, cannot be clinically tested in humans due to safety concerns and the latter have failed to induce broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies. For more than two decades, Inoviruses (non-lytic bacterial phages) have also been utilized as antigen carriers in several vaccine studies.