Recombinant protein vaccines produced in insect cells

Abstract

The baculovirus-insect cell expression system is a well known tool for the production of complex proteins. The technology is also used for commercial manufacture of various veterinary and human vaccines. This review paper provides an overview of how this technology can be applied to produce a multitude of vaccine candidates. The key advantage of this recombinant protein manufacturing platform is that a universal "plug and play" process may be used for producing a broad range of protein-based prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines for both human and veterinary use while offering the potential for low manufacturing costs. Large scale mammalian cell culture facilities previously established for the manufacturing of monoclonal antibodies that have now become obsolete due to yield improvement could be deployed for the manufacturing of these vaccines. Alternatively, manufacturing capacity could be established in geographic regions that do not have any vaccine production capability. Dependent on health care priorities, different vaccines could be manufactured while maintaining the ability to rapidly convert to producing pandemic influenza vaccine when the need arises.

Production of Japanese encephalitis virus-like particles in insect cells

“…[8][9][10] In this system, following infection with a recombinant nucleopolyhedrovirus (NPV) carrying the foreign gene of interest, lepidopteran insect cells produce extremely large quantities of biologically active proteins with complex folding and posttranslational processing and modifications performed in higher eukaryotes during the very late phase of infection. [11][12][13] Compared with mammalian cells, insect cells are easy to culture, and the growth rates of both cells are comparable.…”

“…Insect cells are ideal host cells for the production of mammalian virus proteins. [8][9][10] The cytotoxicity of JEV proteins against insect cells may be lower than that against mammalian cells, because JEV is an insect-borne virus. Among insect cell lines, High Five cells have proved to be an excellent host for the production of recombinant secreted proteins.…”

“…Veterinary subunit vaccines against classical swine fever produced using the baculovirus-insect cell system are commercially available. 10 The baculovirus-insect cell system is also employed for the manufacture of a human papillomavirus VLP vaccine, Cervarix, which has been approved for use against cervical cancer.…”

“…10,14 Quite recently, a seasonal influenza vaccine, Flublok, which contains recombinant hemagglutinin produced using the baculovirus-insect cell system, 10,15 was approved in the USA. These examples demonstrate the potential of insect cells as a practical platform for the production of novel recombinant protein vaccines.…”

Transgene expression in Penaeus monodon cells: evaluation of recombinant baculoviral vectors with shrimp specific hybrid promoters

“…Since then, the recombinant baculoviruses have been successfully used for gene transfer in various eukaryotic cells including those of fishes (Smith and Summers 1989;Leisy et al 2003;Wagle and Jesuthasan 2003;Wagle et al 2004), chicken and duck (Ping et al 2006;Song et al 2006), fruit fly (Oppenheimer et al 1999; Lee et al 2000), honey bees (Ando et al 2007), shrimp (Lu et al 2005;Syed Musthaq et al 2009; Syed Musthaq and Kwang 2011) rabbit (Airenne et al 2000), monkey (Tani et al 2001) and human (Hofmann et al 1995;Kost and Condreay 2002). Besides, recombinant baculovirus has been used for gene therapy (Luo et al 2011;Zhao et al 2012), and vaccine production (van Oers 2006;Treanor et al 2007;Hu et al 2008;Cox 2012). More recently, Gamble and Barton (2011) expressed human telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) in primary fibroblasts and extended their replicative lifespan in vitro using recombinant baculovirus.…”