Department of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel St., London, WC1E 7HT, UK.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2009;655:145-58. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4419-1132-2_11.
Vaccines against viral disease have traditionally relied on attenuated virus strains or inactivation of infectious virus. Subunit vaccines based on viral proteins expressed in heterologous systems have been effective for some pathogens, but have often suffered from poor immunogenicity due to incorrect protein folding or modification. In this chapter we focus on a specific class of viral subunit vaccine that mimics the overall structure of virus particles and thus preserves the native antigenic conformation of the immunogenic proteins. These virus-like particles (VLPs) have been produced for a wide range of taxonomically and structurally distinct viruses, and have unique advantages in terms of safety and immunogenicity over previous approaches. With new VLP vaccines for papillomavirus beginning to reach the market place we argue that this technology has now 'come-of-age' and must be considered a viable vaccine strategy.
传统上，针对病毒性疾病的疫苗依赖于减毒病毒株或传染性病毒的失活。基于在异源系统中表达的病毒蛋白的亚单位疫苗已对一些病原体有效，但由于蛋白质折叠或修饰不正确，常常存在免疫原性差的问题。在本章中，我们重点介绍一类模仿病毒颗粒整体结构的特定病毒亚单位疫苗，从而保持免疫原性蛋白的天然抗原构象。这些类病毒颗粒（VLPs）已针对多种分类学和结构上不同的病毒进行了生产，并且在安全性和免疫原性方面与以前的方法相比具有独特的优势。随着用于乳头瘤病毒的新型 VLP 疫苗开始进入市场，我们认为这项技术现在已经“成熟”，必须被视为一种可行的疫苗策略。
