Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a leading cause of chronic hepatitis and hepatocellular carcinoma worldwide and infects more than 1% of the world?s population. Successful vaccine development is pivotal in controlling this global health problem. A system for efficient assembly of HCV structural proteins into HCV-like particles (VLPs) in insect cells has been developed in our laboratory. These noninfectious HCV-like particles have similar morphologic, serologic and biophysical properties as the putative virions isolated from HCV infected humans. In contrast to recombinant subunit vaccines, the viral proteins of HCV-like particles may be presented in a native, virion-like conformation and may therefore be superior in eliciting a protective humoral and cellular immune response. The humoral and cellular immunogenicity of the virus-like particles with or without viral p7 protein was studied. The HCV-LPs were inoculated intraperitoneally without any adjuvant into either BALB/c or AAD (C57BL/6 transgenic for HLA-A2.1) mice. Immunized mice developed high titers of anti-E2 antibodies and virus-specific cellular immune responses including cytotoxic T lymphocytes and T helper responses with gamma interferon production. The virus-like particles without p7 generated a higher cellular immune response with a more TH1 profile than the particles with p7. Immunization of heat-denatured particles resulted in substantially lower humoral and cellular responses, suggesting that the immunogenicity is strongly dependent on particle formation. To evaluate the potential of HCV-LPs as a protective immunogen in a surrogate model, we challenged HCV-LP-immunized mice one month after the last boost with a recombinant vaccinia virus expressing core, E1 and E2 (vvHCV-ST). Mice immunized with virus-like particles were protected from challenge with the recombinant vvHCV.S but not the control virus (vvlacZ). In comparison, DNA immunization with a construct expressing the HCV structural genes resulted in much less protection from HCV-vaccinia challenge. Adoptive transfer of splenocytes from immunized to nonimmunized mice conferred protection and selective depletion of CD4 or CD8 population abrogated the protective immunity. We also evaluated the effects of adjuvant AS01B (monophosphoryl lipid A and QS21) and CpG oligodeoxynucleotides (ODN) 10105 on the immunogenicity of HCV-LPs in mice, and showed that the adjuvants, especially the combination of both, enhanced the immune response with a more TH1 bias. We also tested the HCV-LP and the adjuvants in a nonhuman primate model (baboon) and demonstrated induction of robust and broad humoral and cellular immune responses that can be enhanced by the adjuvants. Our results indicate that hepatitis C virus-like particles can induce humoral and cellular immune responses and offers a promising approach to vaccine development. We are currently conduct experiments in chimpanzees to test the effectiveness of the HCV-LP as a vaccine candidate.
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