Construction and immunological evaluation of hepatitis B virus core virus-like particles containing multiple antigenic peptides of respiratory syncytial virus.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection causes severe disease in the lower respiratory tract of infants and young children. Currently, no licensed vaccine is available. In this study, we generated the chimeric virus-like particles (tHBc/F, tHBc/F/M2 and tHBc/F/M2/tG VLPs) containing multiple antigenic peptides of RSV proteins based on a truncated hepatitis B virus core carrier (tHBc).

Chimeric virus-like particles containing a conserved region of the G protein in combination with a single peptide of the M2 protein confer protection against respiratory syncytial virus infection.

To investigate the feasibility and efficacy of a virus-like particle (VLP) vaccine composed of the conserved antigenic epitopes of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the chimeric RSV VLPs HBcΔ-tG and HBcΔ-tG/M282-90 were generated based on the truncated hepatitis B virus core protein (HBcΔ). HBcΔ-tG consisted of HBcΔ, the conserved region (aa 144-204) of the RSV G protein. HBcΔ-tG was combined with a single peptide (aa 82-90) of the M2 protein to generate HBcΔ-tG/M282-90.

Development of a novel single-step reverse genetics system for the generation of classical swine fever virus.

We describe an alternative reverse genetics system for generating classical swine fever virus (CSFV) based on swine RNA polymerase I promoter (pSPI)-mediated vRNA transcription. The recombinant plasmid pSPTI/SM harboring a full-length CSFV Shimen strain cDNA, flanked by a swine RNA polymerase I (pol I) promoter sequence at the 5' end and a murine pol I terminator sequence at the 3' end, was constructed. When the plasmid pSPTI/SM was introduced into PK-15 cells by transfection, an infectious CSFV with termini identical to those of the parental virus was generated directly.