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High-throughput process development of an alternative platform for the production of virus-like particles in Escherichia coli

Overview of attention for article published in Journal of Biotechnology, December 2015
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Title
High-throughput process development of an alternative platform for the production of virus-like particles in Escherichia coli
Published in
Journal of Biotechnology, December 2015
DOI 10.1016/j.jbiotec.2015.12.018
Pubmed ID
Authors

Christopher Ladd Effio, Pascal Baumann, Claudia Weigel, Philipp Vormittag, Anton Middelberg, Jürgen Hubbuch

Abstract

The production of safe vaccines against untreatable or new diseases has pushed the research in the field of virus-like particles (VLPs). Currently, a large number of commercial VLP-based human vaccines and vaccine candidates are available or under development. A promising VLP production route is the controlled in vitro assembly of virus proteins into capsids. In the study reported here, a high-throughput screening (HTS) procedure was implemented for the upstream process development of a VLP platform in bacterial cell systems. Miniaturized cultivations were carried out in 48-well format in the BioLector system (m2p-Labs, Germany) using an Escherichia coli strain with a tac promoter producing the murine polyomavirus capsid protein (VP1). The screening procedure incorporated micro-scale cultivations, HTS cell disruption by sonication and HTS-compatible analytics by capillary gel electrophoresis. Cultivation temperatures, shaking speeds, induction and medium conditions were varied to optimize the product expression in E. coli. The most efficient system was selected based on an evaluation of soluble and insoluble product concentrations as well as on the percentage of product in the total soluble protein fraction. The optimized system was scaled up to cultivation 2.5 L shaker flask scale and purified using an anion exchange chromatography membrane adsorber, followed by a size exclusion chromatography polishing procedure. For proof of concept, purified VP1 capsomeres were assembled under defined buffer conditions into empty capsids and characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The presented HTS procedure allowed for a fast development of an efficient production process of VLPs in E. coli. Under optimized cultivation conditions, the VP1 product totalled up to 43% of the total soluble protein fraction, yielding 1.63 mg VP1 per mL of applied cultivation medium. The developed production process strongly promotes the murine polyoma-VLP platform, moving towards an industrially feasible technology for new chimeric vaccines.

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Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 82 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Switzerland 1 1%
Unknown 81 99%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 19 23%
Student > Ph. D. Student 12 15%
Student > Bachelor 12 15%
Researcher 9 11%
Student > Doctoral Student 3 4%
Other 13 16%
Unknown 14 17%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 16 20%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 15 18%
Engineering 11 13%
Chemical Engineering 6 7%
Immunology and Microbiology 3 4%
Other 10 12%
Unknown 21 26%