Molecular advances in the cell biology of SARS-CoV and current disease prevention strategies

Stark, Caren J; Atreya, CD

Although immunization with inactivated viral vaccine provides significant protection in animals against challenge with certain corresponding pathogenic CoVs, in the case of SARS-CoV there remains the threat of introducing live virus into the environment from partially inactivated vaccine, as there are no validated and effective inactivation measures developed yet. To circumvent this obstacle, Chen et al have introduced the S protein into the deletion III region of the live, attenuated modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) vector [66] . This recombinant virus elicits potent neutralizing antibodies in mice, rabbits, and monkeys and the major epitope is mapped to the virus receptor-binding region [66] . In another approach, it has been demonstrated that co-expression of SARS-CoV S, M and N expression plasmids in human 293T cells result in the formation of SARS-CoV pseudoparticles (virus-like particles or VLPs) [67] . These findings help us understand the viral morphogenesis as well as offer a safer alternative to using live, replicating SARS virus in the development of vaccines.