Innovations in the Insect Cell Expression System for Industrial Recombinant Vaccine Antigen Production

The insect cell expression system has previously been proposed as the preferred biosecurity strategy for production of any vaccine, particularly for future influenza pandemic vaccines. The development and regulatory risk for new vaccine candidates is shortened as the platform is already in use for the manufacturing of the FDA-licensed seasonal recombinant influenza vaccine Flublok®. Large-scale production capacity is in place and could be used to produce other antigens as well. However, as demonstrated by the 2019 SARS-CoV-2 pandemic the insect cell expression system has limitations that need to be addressed to ensure that recombinant antigens will indeed play a role in combating future pandemics. The greatest challenge may be the ability to produce an adequate quantity of purified antigen in an accelerated manner. This review summarizes recent innovations in technology areas important for enhancing recombinant-protein production levels and shortening development timelines. Opportunities for increasing product concentrations through vector development, cell line engineering, or bioprocessing and for shortening timelines through standardization of manufacturing processes will be presented.

Two-Component Nanoparticle Vaccine Displaying Glycosylated Spike S1 Domain Induces Neutralizing Antibody Response against SARS-CoV-2 Variants

Vaccines pave the way out of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We have developed a virus-like particle (VLP)-based vaccine using the baculovirus-insect cell expression system, a robust production platform known for its scalability, low cost, and safety. Baculoviruses were constructed encoding SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins: full-length S, stabilized secreted S, or the S1 domain. This two-component nanoparticle vaccine can now be further developed to help alleviate the burden of COVID-19.

Baculovirus-free insect cell expression system for high yield antibody and antigen production

Antibodies are essential tools for therapy and diagnostics. Yet, production remains expensive as it is mostly done in mammalian expression systems. As most therapeutic IgG require mammalian glycosylation to interact with the human immune system, other expression systems are rarely used for production. However, for neutralizing antibodies that are not required to activate the human immune system as well as antibodies used in diagnostics, a cheaper production system would be advantageous. In our study, we show cost-efficient, easy and high yield production of antibodies as well as various secreted antigens including Interleukins and SARS-CoV-2 related proteins in a baculovirus-free insect cell expression system. To improve yields, we optimized the expression vector, media and feeding strategies. In addition, we showed the feasibility of lyophilization of the insect cell produced antibodies. Furthermore, stability and activity of the antibodies was compared to antibodies produced by Expi293F cells revealing a lower aggregation of antibodies originating from High Five cell production. Finally, the newly established High Five expression system was compared to the Expi293F mammalian expression system in regard of yield and costs. Most interestingly, all tested proteins were producible in our High Five cell expression system what was not the case in the Expi293F system, hinting that the High Five cell system is especially suited to produce difficult-to-express target proteins.

InteBac - An integrated bacterial and baculovirus expression vector suite

The successful production of recombinant protein for biochemical, biophysical and structural biological studies critically depends on the correct expression organism. Currently the most commonly used expression organisms for structural studies are E. coli (ca. 70% of all PDB structures) and the baculovirus/ insect cell expression system (ca. 5% of all PDB structures). While insect cell expression is frequently successful for large eukaryotic proteins, it is relatively expensive and time consuming compared to E. coli expression. Frequently the decision to carry out a baculovirus project means restarting cloning from scratch. Here we describe an integrated system that allows the simultaneous cloning into E. coli and baculovirus expression vectors using the same PCR products. The system offers a flexible array of N- and C-terminal affinity, solublisation and utility tags, and the speed allows expression screening to be completed in E. coli, before carrying out time and cost intensive experiments in baculovirus. Importantly, we describe a means of rapidly generating polycistronic bacterial constructs based on the hugely successful biGBac system, making InteBac of particular interest for researchers working on recombinant protein complexes.

Influenza Virus Like Particles (VLPs): Opportunities for H7N9 Vaccine Development

In the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, influenza virus remains a major threat to public health due to its potential to cause epidemics and pandemics with significant human mortality. Cases of H7N9 human infections emerged in eastern China in 2013 and immediately raised pandemic concerns as historically, pandemics were caused by the introduction of new subtypes into immunologically naïve human populations. Highly pathogenic H7N9 cases with severe disease were reported recently, indicating the continuing public health threat and the need for a prophylactic vaccine. Here we review the development of recombinant influenza virus-like particles (VLPs) as vaccines against H7N9 virus. Several approaches to vaccine development are reviewed including the expression of VLPs in mammalian, plant and insect cell expression systems. Although considerable progress has been achieved, including demonstration of safety and immunogenicity of H7N9 VLPs in the human clinical trials, the remaining challenges need to be addressed. These challenges include improvements to the manufacturing processes, as well as enhancements to immunogenicity in order to elicit protective immunity to multiple variants and subtypes of influenza virus.

A Flow-Through Chromatographic Strategy for Hepatitis C Virus-Like Particles Purification

Biopharmaceuticals are currently becoming one of the fastest growing segments of the global pharmaceutical industry, being used in practically all branches of medicine from disease treatment to prevention. Virus-like particles (VLP) hold tremendous potential as a vaccine candidate due to their anticipated immunogenicity and safety profile when compared to inactivated or live attenuated viral vaccines. Nevertheless, there are several challenges yet to be solved in the development and manufacturing of these products, which ultimately can increase time to market. Suchlike virus-based products, the development of a platform approach is often hindered due to diversity and inherent variability of physicochemical properties of the product. In the present work, a flow-through chromatographic purification strategy for hepatitis C VLP expressed using the baculovirus-insect cell expression system was developed. The impact of operational parameters, such as residence time and ionic strength were studied using scaled-down models and their influence on the purification performance was described. The flow-through strategy herein reported made use of radial-flow chromatography columns packed with an anion exchanger and was compared with a bind and elute approach using the same chromatography media. Overall, by selecting the optimal operational setpoints, we were able to achieve higher VLP recoveries in the flow-through process (66% versus 37%) with higher removal of DNA, baculovirus and host-cell protein (92%, 99% and 50% respectively).

Novel Structural Features of Human Norovirus Capsid

ABSTRACTHuman noroviruses are a major cause of gastroenteritis, yet there are still no vaccines or antivirals available. Nevertheless, a number of vaccine candidates that are currently in clinical trials are composed of norovirus virus-like particles (VLPs). These VLPs are recognized as morphologically and antigenically similar to norovirus virions. An X-ray crystal structure of the prototype (GI.1) VLPs showed that the norovirus capsid has a T=3 icosahedral symmetry and is composed of 180 copies of the major capsid protein (VP1) that folds into three quasi-equivalent subunits (A, B, and C). In this study, we determined the cryo-EM structure of VLPs for two GII.4 noroviruses that were detected in 1974 and 2012. We showed that these VLPs had a T=4 symmetry and were composed of 240 copies of VP1. The VP1 on the T=4 VLPs adapted four quasi-equivalent subunits (termed A, B, C, and D), which formed two distinct dimers (A/B and C/D). We found that the T=4 protruding domain was elevated ~21 Å off the capsid shell, which was ~7 Å more than the previously determined for the T=3 GII.10 norovirus. Another interesting feature of the T=4 VLPs was a small cavity and flaplike structure located at the twofold axis. This structural feature was associated with the shell domain (D subunit) and disrupted the contiguous shell. Altogether, we showed that the T=4 VLPs had a number of structural similarities and differences with other noroviruses, but how these structural changes associate with norovirus virions could be important for vaccine studies.IMPORTANCEThe discovery that the GII.4 VLPs (identified in 1974 and 2012, termed CHDC-1974 and NSW-2012, respectively) have a T=4 symmetry is of major significance, since the NSW-2012 is clinically important and previous structural and biochemical studies assumed noroviruses have a T=3 symmetry and are composed of 180 copies of VP1. More importantly, NSW-2012 norovirus shared 96% amino acid identity with a GII.4 vaccine candidate and our data suggests that this vaccine might also have a T=4 symmetry. Although it is not clear if the T=4 VLPs were an artifact of the insect cell expression system, the T=4 VLP vaccines might not recognize equivalent epitopes on T=3 virions, which will be important for future neutralization studies. Finally, further studies with other norovirus genotypes and virions are clearly needed in order to determine the level of this structural diversity.