Viral infectious diseases threaten human health and global stability. Several vaccine platforms, such as DNA, mRNA, recombinant viral vectors, and virus-like particle-based vaccines have been developed to counter these viral infectious diseases. Virus-like particles (VLP) are considered real, present, licensed and successful vaccines against prevalent and emergent diseases due to their non-infectious nature, structural similarity with viruses, and high immunogenicity. However, only a few VLP-based vaccines have been commercialized, and the others are either in the clinical or preclinical phases. Notably, despite success in the preclinical phase, many vaccines are still struggling with small-scale fundamental research owing to technical difficulties. Successful production of VLP-based vaccines on a commercial scale requires a suitable platform and culture mode for large-scale production, optimization of transduction-related parameters, upstream and downstream processing, and monitoring of product quality at each step. In this review article, we focus on the advantages and disadvantages of various VLP-producing platforms, recent advances and technical challenges in VLP production, and the current status of VLP-based vaccine candidates at commercial, preclinical, and clinical levels.

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We investigate the flow dynamics of an incompressible fluid in a polyelectrolyte grafted rotating narrow fluidic channel under the influence of an externally applied electric field. Here, we invoke an analytical formalism to solve the transport equations governing the flow dynamics in the rotating environment. We bring out the rotational force driven complex flow dynamics in the channel as modulated by the soft layer induced alteration in the electrostatic potential under electrokinetic actuation. We observe that the flow reverses at the centre of the channel for higher rotational speeds, emerging from an intricate competition among the rotation induced Coriolis force and the electrical body force due to the electrical double layer phenomenon. We show that an increase in the thickness of the polyelectrolyte layer (PEL) increases the transverse electrostatic potential, which upon interacting with the externally applied electric field alters the flow dynamics non-trivially in a rotating platform. Furthermore, we show that the frictional drag, stemming from the presence of ions in polymeric chains in the PEL enhances the resistance to the flow field, leading to a reduction in flow velocities in the channel. Finally, we explain the consequential effects of grafted PEL as realized through the thickness of the layer and the PEL drag on the alteration in the volume transport rates in the channel.

Spike, Envelope and Membrane proteins from the SARS CoV-2 virus surface coat are important vaccine targets. We hereby report recombinant co-expression of the three proteins (Spike, Envelope and Membrane) in a engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae platform (D-Crypt™) and their self-assembly as Virus-like particle (VLP). This design as a multi-antigenic VLP for SARS CoV-2 has the potential to be a scalable vaccine candidate. The VLP is confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images of the SARS CoV-2, along with supportive HPLC, Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) and allied analytical data. The