{"id":83439,"date":"2017-08-15T11:00:34","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=c0043810ba768b15427dbf9cfcd39015"},"modified":"2017-08-15T11:00:34","modified_gmt":"2017-08-15T11:00:34","slug":"news-story-making-safer-polio-vaccines-with-plants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=83439","title":{"rendered":"News story: Making safer polio vaccines with plants"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The research, published in the journal Nature Communications<\/a>, confirms that these plant-made particles are structurally similar to poliovirus and can protect mice from infection as effectively as existing vaccines.<\/p>\n

As large amounts of live poliovirus are needed to make current vaccines, VLP-based vaccines could provide a safer alternative for vaccine production after polio eradication.<\/p>\n

What are VLPs<\/abbr>?<\/h3>\n

VLPs<\/abbr> are empty protein shells that \u2018mimic\u2019 the virus but lack the genetic material needed for replication.
\nScientists have suggested poliovirus VLPs<\/abbr> as potential vaccine candidates because they can provoke an immune response but aren\u2019t infectious. However, their instability has long been a barrier for their use as vaccines.<\/p>\n

In January, NIBSC<\/abbr> researchers published a new genetic approach to make stable poliovirus VLPs<\/abbr><\/a>, which forms the basis of this new study.<\/p>\n

Using plants to make medicines<\/h3>\n

Over the last 20 years, plants have begun to compete with bacteria, yeast, insect and mammalian cells as producers of medicines and they\u2019ve recently been used to make candidate VLP-based vaccines against infectious diseases such as influenza.<\/p>\n

For this study, researchers expressed stabilised poliovirus VLPs<\/abbr> in plants and compared them to normal, or \u2018wild-type\u2019, poliovirus.<\/p>\n

They found that plant-produced stabilised VLPs<\/abbr> had a similar structure to wild-type poliovirus and could promote similar levels of protective proteins, known as antibodies, as an existing vaccine.<\/p>\n

This paper<\/a> suggests plants could be used to make large quantities of stable and effective poliovirus VLPs<\/abbr> for new vaccines.<\/p>\n

The research is a collaboration between scientists at the John Innes Centre, NIBSC<\/abbr>, University of Oxford, Diamond Light Source and University of Leeds and funded by the World Health Organisation (WHO).<\/p>\n

NIBSC<\/abbr> researcher, and study author, Dr Andrew Macadam said:<\/p>\n

\n

Current vaccines for polio are produced from large amounts of live virus which carries a threat of accidental escape and re-introduction. As VLPs<\/abbr> aren\u2019t infectious, making vaccines using these particles is safer and could be particularly important post-eradication.<\/p>\n

This research shows that plants can be used to successfully make stable VLPs<\/abbr> for vaccines. It takes us a step closer to replacing current polio vaccines, providing us with a cheap and viable option for making VLP-based vaccines.<\/p>\n

But the possibilities of this approach could extend further than polio and we\u2019re also looking at applying these methods to develop stable VLPs<\/abbr> for new vaccines against other viruses.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new study, involving scientists from National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC), has reported the production of stable poliovirus virus-like particles (VLPs) in plants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}