Research progress on commonly used expression systems and applications of virus-like particles
Virus-like particles(VLPs)are nanoparticles that are self-assembled from one or more structural proteins,which can be arranged in several layers or contain a lipid outer membrane.Due to the lack of genetic material,VLPs cannot infect host cells,but are highly immunogenic and can induce immune responses different from conventional inactivated vaccines.VLPs can be produced using a variety of systems including bacterial,yeast,plant,insect and mammalian cells.Compared with traditional vaccines,VLPs have incomparable advantages,so they are becoming more and more popular in the biomedical field.To date,a series of vaccine candi-dates based on VLPs have been developed for immunization and prevention of various infectious diseases.At the same time,the recent successful application of VLPs in targeted drug delivery and gene therapy has attracted attention.This paper mainly reviews the com-monly used expression systems of VLPs and the research progress of their applications.