Characterization of genotype IV hepatitis E virus-like particles expressed in E.coli

Rushi Liu; Chufan Tan; Junwen Wu; Ye Xu; Xiaofeng Li; Zhihong Zhong; Sang Li; Yilan Qiu; Bo Feng

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e15284

Characterization of genotype IV hepatitis E virus-like particles expressed in E.coli

Heliyon. 2023 Apr 7;9(4):e15284. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e15284. eCollection 2023 Apr.

Authors

Rushi Liu¹, Chufan Tan¹, Junwen Wu², Ye Xu¹, Xiaofeng Li¹, Zhihong Zhong¹, Sang Li¹, Yilan Qiu³, Bo Feng⁴

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Medical Molecular and Immunological Diagnostics, School of Medicine, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, 410013, China.
² Nanya Middle School of Changsha, Changsha, 410129, China.
³ School of Life Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, 410081, China.
⁴ The Affiliated Changsha Central Hospital, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, 410008, China.

Abstract

HEV (Hepatitis E virus) is an infectious disease transmitted between humans and animals, which poses a severe threat to the biological safety and property throughout the world. The disease is especially severe in patients with potential liver cirrhosis and women during pregnancy. There is no specific and thorough HEV treatment at present. The development of hepatitis E virus vaccine is vital to the prevention of viral hepatitis worldwide. Since HEV cannot grow adequately in vitro, vaccine developed by devitalized virus particles does not work. Exploration of HEV-like structures is essential for the development of functional vaccines against HEV infection. ORF2 encodes the structural proteins of HEV, some of which can automatically assemble into virus-like particles (VLP) in this experiment, the recombinant capsid protein p27 was expressed in E. coli and the VLP formed by p27 was used to immunize mice. The results showed that the VLP formed by recombinant P27 had similar particle size to that of HEV; the immune dose produced by p27 was positively correlated with the immune effect. Compared with other genetic engineering subunit vaccines, P27 protein has a better application prospect.

Keywords: HEV vaccine; Hepatitis E; The recombinant capsid protein p27; Virus-like particles.