Expression Of HIV-1 Gag Virus-Like Particles Carrying Japanese Encephalitis Virus Envelope Protein In Insect Cells

Japanese encephalitis virus is the causative agent of Japanese encephalitis, an acute and fatal infectious disease with severe sequelae, which remains endemo-epidemic in several countries in East, South-east and South Asia. Vaccination seems to be the only effective approach to bring this disease under control. Inactivated vaccines, derived from JEV infected mouse brains or cell culture are now available, but their efficacy and coverage are not satisfactory, and their production is expensive and hazardous. In addition, post-vaccination complications are frequently reported.In this study we constructed and expressed two recombinant baculoviruses, encoding HIV-1 Gag (Bac-p55) and JEV prM/E (BacPAKJE) respectively. Our results showed that: 1) JEV E protein was expressed in BacPAKJE infected insect cell Sf9, and presented onto the cell surface; 2) BacPAKJE infection could induce Sf9 cell fusion under normal culture conditions; 3) HIV-1 Gag p55 was expressed and assembled into virus-like particles (VLP) budding through the membrane of insect cells infected by Bac-p55.