The New Plant Expression System for the Development of Vaccines against Papillomaviruses.

To enhance the synthesis of antigenic envelope proteins L1 of high-grade papillomavirus types HPV16, HPV18, HPV31, and HPV45, the sequence of the gene encoding the cucumber mosaic virus replicase (RdRP CMV) was inserted into the genetic construct. This made it possible to increase the production of these antigenic proteins to 25-27 µg/mg total soluble protein.

Expression optimization of a cell membrane-penetrating human papillomavirus type 16 therapeutic vaccine candidate in Nicotiana benthamiana.

High-risk human papillomaviruses (hr-HPVs) cause cervical cancer, the fourth most common cancer in women worldwide. A HPV-16 candidate therapeutic vaccine, LALF32-51-E7, was developed by fusing a modified E7 protein to a bacterial cell-penetrating peptide (LALF): this elicited both tumour protection and regression in pre-clinical immunization studies. In the current study, we investigated the potential for producing LALF32-51-E7 in a plant expression system by evaluating the effect of subcellular localization and usage of different expression vectors and gene silencing suppressors. The highest expression levels of LALF32-51-E7 were obtained by using a self-replicating plant expression vector and chloroplast targeting, which increased its accumulation by 27-fold compared to cytoplasmic localization. The production and extraction of LALF32-51-E7 was scaled-up and purification optimized by affinity chromatography. If further developed, this platform could potentially allow for the production of a more affordable therapeutic vaccine for HPV-16. This would be extremely relevant in the context of developing countries, where cervical cancer and other HPV-related malignancies are most prevalent, and where the population have limited or no access to preventative vaccines due to their typical high costs.

Cervical cancer in sub-Saharan Africa: a preventable noncommunicable disease.

INTRODUCTION: Infections caused by high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) are responsible for 7.7% of cancers in developing countries, mainly cervical cancer. This disease is steadily increasing in sub-Saharan Africa, with more than 75,000 new cases and 50,000 deaths yearly, further increased by HIV infection. Areas covered: The current status of cervical cancer associated with HPV in sub-Saharan Africa has been systematically revised. The main issues discussed here are related to the public health burden of cervical cancer in sub-Saharan Africa and predictions for the coming decades, including molecular epidemiology and determinants of HPV infection in Africa, and promising prevention measures currently being evaluated in Africa. Expert commentary: By the year 2030, cervical cancer will kill more than 443,000 women yearly worldwide, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. The increase in the incidence of cervical cancer in Africa could counteract the progress made by African women in reducing maternal mortality and longevity. Nevertheless, cervical cancer is a potentially preventable noncommunicable disease, and intervention strategies to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health concern should be urgently implemented.

Stop codon mutagenesis for homogenous expression of human papillomavirus L1 protein in Escherichia coli.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is widely accepted to be the major causative pathogen of cervical cancer, warts, and other epithelial tumors. Virus infection and subsequent disease development can be prevented by vaccination with HPV vaccines derived from eukaryotic expression systems. Here, we report the soluble expression of the major capsid protein L1 of HPV31, a dominant carcinogenic HPV genotype, in Escherichia coli. HPV31 L1 protein and its elongated form (L1+) were observed in SDS-PAGE and CE-SDS analysis, generated by the native HPV31 L1 gene with a TAA stop codon. Replacing the TAA with TAG but not TGA could completely terminate protein translation. Mass spectrometry sequencing showed that L1+ comprised L1 with a C-terminal extension of 38 amino acids (aa). RNA folding analysis revealed that the unfaithful L1+ expression may result from translational read-through, as TAG is more stable and accessible than the other stop codons. The 38-aa elongated fragment perturbs self-assembly of HPV31 L1+, as shown in size and morphology analyses. By 3D cryo-electron microscopy structure determination, we show self-assembly of purified HPV31 L1 (TAG) VLPs into T = 7 icosahedral symmetry particles, resembling the native HPV virion. Finally, through additional characterization and antigenicity/immunogenicity assays, we verified that the E.coli-derived HPV31 VLPs are an ideal immunogen for HPV vaccine development. Our findings outline a codon optimization stratagem for protein expression and provide a method for the in-depth investigation of prokaryotic translation regulation.

Developments in L2-based human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines.

Infections with sexually transmitted high-risk Human Papillomavirus (hrHPV), of which there are at least 15 genotypes, are responsible for a tremendous disease burden by causing cervical, and subsets of other ano-genital and oro-pharyngeal carcinomas, together representing 5% of all cancer cases worldwide. HPV subunit vaccines consisting of virus-like particles (VLP) self-assembled from major capsid protein L1 plus adjuvant have been licensed. Prophylactic vaccinations with the 2-valent (HPV16/18), 4-valent (HPV6/11/16/18), or 9-valent (HPV6/11/16/18/31/33/45/52/58) vaccine induce high-titer neutralizing antibodies restricted to the vaccine types that cause up to 90% of cervical carcinomas, a subset of other ano-genital and oro-pharyngeal cancers and 90% of benign ano-genital warts (condylomata). The complexity of manufacturing multivalent L1-VLP vaccines limits the number of included VLP types and thus the vaccines' spectrum of protection, leaving a panel of oncogenic mucosal HPV unaddressed. In addition, current vaccines do not protect against cutaneous HPV types causing benign skin warts, or against beta-papillomavirus (betaPV) types implicated in the development of non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) in immunosuppressed patients. In contrast with L1-VLP, the minor capsid protein L2 contains type-common epitopes that induce low-titer yet broadly cross-neutralizing antibodies to heterologous PV types and provide cross-protection in animal challenge models. Efforts to increase the low immunogenicity of L2 (poly)-peptides and thereby to develop broader-spectrum HPV vaccines are the focus of this review.

Recent advances in preclinical model systems for papillomaviruses.

Preclinical model systems to study multiple features of the papillomavirus life cycle have greatly aided our understanding of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) biology, disease progression and treatments. The challenge to studying HPV in hosts is that HPV along with most PVs are both species and tissue restricted. Thus, fundamental properties of HPV viral proteins can be assessed in specialized cell culture systems but host responses that involve innate immunity and host restriction factors requires preclinical surrogate models. Fortunately, there are several well-characterized and new animal models of papillomavirus infections that are available to the PV research community. Old models that continue to have value include canine, bovine and rabbit PV models and new rodent models are in place to better assess host-virus interactions. Questions arise as to the strengths and weaknesses of animal PV models for HPV disease and how accurately these preclinical models predict malignant progression, vaccine efficacy and therapeutic control of HPV-associated disease. In this review, we examine current preclinical models and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the various models as well as provide an update on new opportunities to study the numerous unknowns that persist in the HPV research field.

The current state of therapeutic and T cell-based vaccines against human papillomaviruses.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is known to be a necessary factor for many gynecologic malignancies and is also associated with a subset of head and neck malignancies. This knowledge has created the opportunity to control these HPV-associated cancers through vaccination. However, despite the availability of prophylactic HPV vaccines, HPV infections remain extremely common worldwide. In addition, while prophylactic HPV vaccines have been effective in preventing infection, they are ineffective at clearing pre-existing HPV infections. Thus, there is an urgent need for therapeutic and T cell-based vaccines to treat existing HPV infections and HPV-associated lesions and cancers. Unlike prophylactic vaccines, which generate neutralizing antibodies, therapeutic, and T cell-based vaccines enhance cell-mediated immunity against HPV antigens. Our review will cover various therapeutic and T cell-based vaccines in development for the treatment of HPV-associated diseases. Furthermore, we review the strategies to enhance the efficacy of therapeutic vaccines and the latest clinical trials on therapeutic and T cell-based HPV vaccines.

Expression of HPV-16 L1 capsomeres with glutathione-S-transferase as a fusion protein in tobacco plastids: an approach for a capsomere-based HPV vaccine.

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the main cause of cervical cancer, which is the second most severe cancer of women worldwide, particularly in developing countries. Although vaccines against HPV infection are commercially available, they are neither affordable nor accessible to women in low income countries e.g. Africa. Thus, alternative cost-effective vaccine production approaches need to be developed. This study uses tobacco plants to express pentameric capsomeres of HPV that have been reported to generate elevated immune responses against HPV. A modified HPV-16 L1 (L1_2xCysM) protein has been expressed as a fusion protein with glutathione-S-transferase (GST) in tobacco chloroplasts following biolistic transformation. In total 7 transplastomic lines with healthy phenotypes were generated. Site specific integration of the GST-L1_2xCysM and aadA genes was confirmed by PCR. Southern blot analysis verified homogenous transformation of all transplastomic lines. Antigen capture ELISA with the conformation-specific antibody Ritti01, showed protein expression as well as the retention of immunogenic epitopes of L1 protein. In their morphology, GST-L1 expressing tobacco plants were identical to wild type plants and yielded fertile flowers. Taken together, these data enrich knowledge for future development of cost-effective plant-made vaccines against HPV.

Characterization of human papillomavirus 6b L1 virus-like particles isolated from silkworms using capillary zone electrophoresis.

Human papillomavirus 6b L1 virus-like particles (VLPs) were successfully expressed using Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus (BmNPV) bacmid expression system and rapidly purified using size exclusion chromatography after ultracentrifugation procedure and characterized by capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE). The average capillary electrophoresis migration time was 11 min with the relative standard deviation (RSD) of 0.3% of human papillomavirus 6b L1 VLPs. After this threefold fractionation, the CZE samples were still further investigated by dynamic light scattering and immuno blotting. The versatile technique, CZE not only proved to be a valuable tool for VLP characterization, but was also found to be reliable and precise. Thus CZE will also be an important option for the quality control of VLPs in pharmaceutical research level.

Transposon leads to contamination of clinical pDNA vaccine.

We report an unexpected contamination during clinical manufacture of a Human Papilomavirus (HPV) 16 E6 encoding plasmid DNA (pDNA) vaccine, with a transposon originating from the Escherichia coli DH5 host cell genome. During processing, presence of this transposable element, insertion sequence 2 (IS2) in the plasmid vector was not noticed until quality control of the bulk pDNA vaccine when results of restriction digestion, sequencing, and CGE analysis were clearly indicative for the presence of a contaminant. Due to the very low level of contamination, only an insert-specific PCR method was capable of tracing back the presence of the transposon in the source pDNA and master cell bank (MCB). Based on the presence of an uncontrolled contamination with unknown clinical relevance, the product was rejected for clinical use. In order to prevent costly rejection of clinical material, both in-process controls and quality control methods must be sensitive enough to detect such a contamination as early as possible, i.e. preferably during plasmid DNA source generation, MCB production and ultimately during upstream processing. However, as we have shown that contamination early in the process development pipeline (source pDNA, MCB) can be present below limits of detection of generally applied analytical methods, the introduction of "engineered" or transposon-free host cells seems the only 100% effective solution to avoid contamination with movable elements and should be considered when searching for a suitable host cell-vector combination.

[Construction and eukaryotic expression of PVAX1-hPV58mE6E7fcGB composite gene vaccine].

To construct and express a composite gene vaccine for human papillomavirus 58(HPV58)-associated cervical cancer, we inserted HPV58mE6E7 fusion gene into pCI-Fc-GPI eukaryotic expression vector, constructing a recombinant plasmid named pCI-sig-HPV58mE6E7-Fc-GPI. Then we further inserted fragment of sig-HPV58mE6E7Fc-GPI into the novel vaccine vector PVAX1-IRES-GM/B7, constructing PVAX1-HPV58mE6E7FcGB composite gene vaccine. PVAX1-HPV58mE6E7FcGB vaccine was successfully constructed and identified by restriction endonuclease and sequencing analysis. Eukaryotic expression of fusion antigen sig-HPV58mE6E7-Fc-GPI and molecular ad-juvant GM-CSF and B7. 1 were proved to be realized at the same time by flow cytometry and immunofluorescence. So PVAX1-HPV58mE6E7FcGB can be taken as a candidate of therapeutic vaccine for HPV58-associated tumors and their precancerous transformations.

Vaccine farming in Cape Town.

The review details the development of the Subunit Vaccine Group at the University of Cape Town, from its beginnings as a plant virology laboratory in the 1980s. The investigation and development of Human papillomavirus (HPV) and Human immunodeficiency vaccine candidates are covered in detail, with an emphasis on how this work allowed the evolution of a systematic approach to the optimisation of expression of these and other proteins especially in plants, but also in insect cell culture. We discuss various insights gained during our work, such as approaches to codon optimisation, use of different vector systems and plant hosts, intracellular targetting and gene modification. The future prospects for both our work and for the field of plant-made vaccines in general, are discussed.

Human papillomavirus vaccines in plants.

Human papillomaviruses are the etiological agents of cervical cancer, one of the two most prevalent cancers in women in developing countries. Currently available prophylactic vaccines are based on the L1 major capsid protein, which forms virus-like particles when expressed in yeast and insect cell lines. Despite their recognized efficacy, there are significant shortcomings: the vaccines are expensive, include only two oncogenic virus types, are delivered via intramuscular injection and require a cold chain. Plant expression systems may provide ways of overcoming some of these problems, in particular the expense. In this article, we report recent promising advances in the production of prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines against human papillomavirus by expression of the relevant antigens in plants, and discuss future prospects for the use of such vaccines.

Production of pharmaceutical-grade plasmids at high concentration and high supercoiled percentage.

The increased use of plasmid-based vaccines to replace their more challenging viral counterparts has increased the demand for high purity and high concentration plasmids. Here we report the production of plasmids encoding different transgenes for DNA vaccine candidates at gram scale with an integrated process consisting of batch fermentation and limited steps of purification. Plasmid products encoding for eight smallpox antigens that were combined into a bioterrorism DNA vaccine exhibited high purity with undetectable RNA, protein and endotoxin, concentration of up to 13.6mg/mL and supercoiled percentage of 94.5+/-1.1% after storage at -80 degrees C for over 1 year. The process has been scaled up for the cGMP manufacture of pharmaceutical-grade human papillomavirus and influenza DNA vaccines up to a 50g scale, also demonstrating high purity and high concentration.

Human papillomavirus vaccination in the prevention of cervical neoplasia.

Cervical cancer remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality for women worldwide. Although the introduction of comprehensive screening programs has reduced the disease incidence in developed countries, it remains a major problem in the developing world. The recent licensing of 2 vaccines against human papillomavirus (HPV) type 16 and HPV-18, the viruses responsible for 70% of cervical cancer cases, offers the hope of disease prevention. In this article, we review the role of HPV in the etiology of cervical cancer and the evidence to support the introduction of vaccination programs in young women and discuss the potential obstacles to widespread vaccination. In addition, we discuss the issues that remain to be elucidated, including the potential need for booster doses of the vaccine and the role of concomitant vaccination in men.

Immunomodulatory activity of a plant extract containing human papillomavirus 16-E7 protein in human monocyte-derived dendritic cells.

This study reports the immunomodulatory activity on human monocyte derived dendritic cells (MDDCs) of a vaccine preparation shown to be effective against an HPV16-related tumour in an animal model. The vaccine is composed of extract from Nicotiana benthamiana leaves containing HPV16 E7 protein expressed by a potato virus X-derived vector (NbPVX-E7). The effect of the extract was evaluated on MDDC differentiation and maturation by monitoring the phenotypic expression of specific markers. The results show that NbPVX-E7 does not induce monocyte differentiation to dendritic cells, but does induce MDDC maturation. Plant extract does not influence MDDC-uptake of E7-FITC while it significantly improves the Ovalbumin-FITC uptake, considered as a model antigen. Importantly, NbPVX-E7-pulsed MDDCs/PBMCs are able to prime human blood-derived lymphocytes from healthy individuals to induce HPV16 E7-specific cytotoxic activity. This is a propaedeutic study for a possible use of E7-containing plant extract in human immunotherapy of HPV-related lesions.

Production and verification of human papillomavirus type 18 vaccine in vitro.

This study aimed to generate human papillomavirus (HPV) type 18 L1 virus-like particles (VLPs) and investigated the immunity effectiveness in vitro by using the Bac to Bac baculovirus expression system and Ni-NTA purification system to express and purify the VLP. The bio-function and immune response of purified VLP were analyzed by a mouse erythrocyte haemagglutination assay and the IFN-gamma ELISPOT. The proteins of interest, primarily located at the nucleus, formed VLP by self-assembly, and had an effective immune activity in vitro. The level of IFN-gamma in the specific HPV18 positive group was significantly higher than that of the mixed high-risk HPV infected group and non-HPV infection one in vitro. Our study indicated that HPV18 later protein L1 was efficiently expressed in Bac to Bac baculovirus expression system and the HPV18 L1-VLPs showed immunoreactivity and bio-activity in vitro. Furthermore, the ELISPOT results support the hypothesis that the cell-mediated immunity generated by HPV18 L1-VLP may cross-type among high-risk HPV types.