Chimeric particles of tobacco mosaic virus as a platform for the development of next-generation nanovaccines

Abstract

The production of vaccines and other proteins in plants for medical purposes offers a number of advantages over other expression systems. The tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) is an appropriate model for the development of a variety of vectors, including those used for the assembly of chimeric particles carrying heterologous peptides on the surface and inducing an effective immune response. To overcome the problems arising during the assembly of such particles from recombinant subunits of the coat protein, peptide linkers, suppressed stop codons, and proteolytic sites are used. To date, it has been shown that TMV-based nanovaccines provide protection against the viruses of influenza A, foot-and-mouth disease, papilloma, and they are also able to overcome B-cell tolerance for cancer-cell suppression. Genetically modified TMV-based virions can accommodate the ions of various metals and act as affinity agents for protein purification.