Recent Advances in Nanovaccines Using Biomimetic Immunomodulatory Materials

Vijayan, Veena; Mohapatra, Adityanarayan; Uthaman, Saji; Park, In-Kyu

VLPs are molecules that resemble the structure of viruses without viral genetic material. These self-assembling NPs that lack infectious nucleic acid are formed by the self-assembly of biocompatible capsid proteins. They are ideal nanovaccine systems, as they have the innate viral structure, which can interact with the immune system without any threat of causing infections [69, 70] . These VLPs can act as vaccines have nano-size and a repetitive structural order, and could induce an immune response in the absence of an adjuvant [71] . VLPs assemble without encapsulating any viral RNA, and hence they are noninfectious and nonreplicating, as the genes coded for viral integrase are deleted before expression. This prevents packed genome integration into the host cell, as well as the recombination of the live or defective virus. The first VLP vaccine was developed against the hepatitis B virus, which was later commercialized in 1986 [72] . VLP vaccines against hepatitis E and the human papillomavirus have been used in human since 2006 [73, 74] .