Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2018-2019)

Virus-Like Particles (VLPs) represent one of the most exciting emerging vaccine technologies for generatingx000D
effective and long-lasting immune protection. VLPs consist of protein shells studded with short strands of thex000D
proteins specific to whatever disease the vaccine is intended to control. VLPs are made to look like a virus,x000D
allowing them to be recognized readily by the body's immune system, however, they lack the core geneticx000D
material, making them non-infectious and unable to replicate.x000D
The development of a reliable and efficient quantitative biodistribution methodology based on nuclear imaging,x000D
is a prerequisite for the development of mid and long-term research projects aiming at establishing strongx000D
correlations between the strength of the immune response, and the local presence of virus-like particles in vivo.x000D
This project will enable the development of an efficient methodology a) to radiolabel VLP with radioisotopesx000D
for positron emission tomography (PET), b) to purify thus-radiolabeled VLPs by size-exclusionx000D
chromatography (SEC), 3) to provide PET biodistribution of radiolabeled VLPs, injected in a mouse model.x000D
This short-term research project will provide the following key information, essential for planning subsequentx000D
VLP biodistribution studies: radiolabeling parameters (chelate, chelate binding reaction time, temperature,x000D
chelation challenge); SEC purification parameters (max. mass of VLP to be eluted; elution kinetics; elutionx000D
profile; handling of radioactive waste produced by SEC); parameters for preserving VLP functionality;x000D
minimum mass and activity of radiolabeled VLP to be injected, to reach acceptable PET biodistributionx000D
profiles. At the end of this short-term project, the company will have access to a complete methodology for thex000D
PET biodistribution of VLPs in vivo. The team will be able to plan a full-scale research project, with the aim ofx000D
correlating the effectiveness of VLPs as vaccination products, with several biodistribution signatures revealedx000D
in PET data. This methodology has the potential to accelerate the validation of new VLP-based vaccines.