Hepatitis E virus (HEV) infections represent a major health problem in developing countries where epidemics primarily affect young to middle-age adults. Although HEV does not lead to chronic hepatitis or cirrhosis, the infection is severe enough to warrant prevention. We will demonstrate that the capsid protein of HEV can self-assemble into National Institutes of Health National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases particles that are morphologically similar to native HEV virions. We propose that self-assembled virus-like particles expressed from the HEV caps id protein would preserve conformational neutralizing epitopes and, therefore, be an ideal vaccine candidate for long-term protective immunity. The putative capsid protein will be expressed in several expression systems along with other putative structural proteins of the virus. Protein products will be inspected for the self-assemblinz of virus-like particles. Purified virus-like particles will then be tested for antigenicity to validate the conservation of immunologically important epitopes.Awardee's statement of the potential commercial applications of the research:The isolation of HEV particles would greatly facilitate HEV vaccine development. The commercial uses for these capsids include utility as a vaccine to induce long term protection against natural infection and the preparation of antibodies to HEV particles that could be used directly as anti-virals.National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
