Engineering of a plant-produced virus-like particle to improve the display of the Plasmodium falciparum Pfs25 antigen and transmission-blocking activity of the vaccine candidate.

ABSTRACT: Malaria kills around 409,000 people a year, mostly children under the age of five. Malaria transmission-blocking vaccines work to reduce malaria prevalence in a community and have the potential to be part of a multifaceted approach required to eliminate the parasites causing the disease. Pfs25 is a leading malaria transmission-blocking antigen and has been successfully produced in a plant expression system as both a subunit vaccine and as a virus-like particle. This study demonstrates an improved version of the virus-like particle antigen display molecule by eliminating known protease sites from the prior A85 variant. This re-engineered molecule, termed B29, displays three times the number of Pfs25 antigens per virus-like particle compared to the original Pfs25 virus-like particle. An impr

SUBMITTER: Tottey S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9888754 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature