Functional Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Virus-Like Particles From Insect Cells

Antonina Naskalska; Agnieszka Dabrowska; Artur Szczepanski; Krzysztof P Jasik; Beata Gromadzka; Krzysztof Pyrc

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2021.732998

Functional Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Virus-Like Particles From Insect Cells

Front Microbiol. 2021 Oct 20:12:732998. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.732998. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Antonina Naskalska¹, Agnieszka Dabrowska^{1

2}, Artur Szczepanski^{1

2}, Krzysztof P Jasik³, Beata Gromadzka^{4

5}, Krzysztof Pyrc¹

Affiliations

¹ Virogenetics Laboratory of Virology, Malopolska Centre of Biotechnology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland.
² Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Biotechnology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland.
³ Department of Pathology, School of Pharmacy, Medical University of Silesia in Katowice, Sosnowiec, Poland.
⁴ Department of "in vitro" Studies, Institute of Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine, Gdańsk, Poland.
⁵ NanoExpo®, Gdańsk, Poland.

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) remains a major epidemic threat since the beginning of 2020. Efforts to combat the virus and the associated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) disease are being undertaken worldwide. To facilitate the research on the virus itself, a number of surrogate systems have been developed. Here, we report the efficient production of SARS-CoV-2 virus-like particles (VLPs) in insect cells. Contrary to widely used pseudovirus particles, where only one coronaviral protein is displayed within a heterologous scaffold, developed VLPs are structurally similar to the native virus and allow for more throughput studies on the biology of the infection. On the other hand, being devoid of the viral genome, VLPs are unable to replicate and thus safe to work with. Importantly, this is the first report showing that SARS-CoV-2 VLPs can be efficiently produced in insect cells and purified using scalable affinity chromatography.

Keywords: SARS CoV-2; insect cells; purification; transduction; virus-like particles.