Nanoparticle Vaccines Adopting Virus-like Features for Enhanced Immune Potentiation

Chattopadhyay, Saborni; Chen, Jui-Yi; Chen, Hui-Wen; Hu, Che-Ming Jack

Coating nanoparticles with cellular membranes is an emerging functionalization approach that can pave ways to novel vaccine formulations with virus-mimetic features. It has been shown that following dispersion of cell membrane vesicles with nanoparticles, highly controlled membrane coating can be achieved, yielding unilamellar membrane cloaked nanoparticles retaining membrane proteins in their right-side-out orientation [226] [227] [228] . These nanoparticles are structurally analogous to enveloped viruses consisting of cell-derived lipid membranes stabilized via viral capsids or matrix proteins [229] . The membrane coating approach has been adapted for vaccine preparations against cancer and bacteria [154, [230] [231] [232] . Enhanced dendritic cell activation and presentation of a melanoma-associated tumor antigen (gp100) was demonstrated by Fang et al. using PLGA nanoparticles cloaked in B16-F10 membranes [232] . The enhanced immune response to the membrane antigen was attributed to increased cellular delivery and colocalization with immunological adjuvant facilitated by the nanoparticles. Gao et al. also showed that bacterial outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) can be rendered more immunogenic following coating on gold nanoparticles. The OMV-coated nanoparticles significantly increased antigen delivery to lymph nodes and elevated production of cytokines associated with bacterial containment [233] . The membrane cloaking approach offers a titillating strategy towards future vaccine designs as the method enables coupling of membrane-anchored antigens in their native conformation with immunogenic nanocarriers.