Meeting report VLPNPV: Session 8: Vaccines I.

In Session 8 of the recent conference "Virus-Like Particle and Nano-Particle Vaccines" held at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California (05 June 2014), four scientists described new virus-like particle (VLP) approaches, progress, and early-stage plans for vaccines against significant human pathogens including HPV, malaria, HIV, Dengue, and RSV. A unifying theme was that displaying epitopes in an array on a virus-like particle can be a powerful approach for achieving a strong immune response. VLP approaches described included display of epitopes on bacteriophage, display of epitopes as fusions with other protein multimerization domains, and self-assembly of recombinantly-expressed virus coat proteins. Another theme in some of the presentations was the targeting of neutralizing epitopes that are masked or only transiently accessible during natural infection.