Using Mass Spectrometry To Study HPV-a Kind Of Nano-particle Vaccine

Cervical cancer is the second most dangerous cancer to women, having been proven closely associated with the infection of human papilloma virus (HPV). And in 1995, the world health organization (WHO) and International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) have identified that HPV is pathogeny of cervical cancer. Because of the vital role of HPV in the cervical cancer pathogeny, in recent years many countries are concentrating on the development of recombinant HPV vaccines. Recombinant vaccines, i.e., virus like particles (VLPs),is a kind of nanoparticles assembled by the virus capsid protein expressed in a different host. Compared with monomers or oligomers of the capside protein, VLP has the obvious advantage on cervical cancer prevention, bearing high antigenic fidelity to the naturally occuring virus. However, one of the challenges that recombinant protein medicines face is how to ensure the protein expressed in a different host, maintains its primary sequence and higer-order structures. Among them the protein C-terminal sequence determination has stood out as a bottleneck, although a prerequisite for drug quality control nowadays. In this thesis we explore the mass spectrometric methods of C-terminal protein sequencing based on four types of recombinant HPV vaccines (HPV6,11,16 and 18). Through this study we hope to establish a general MS method for recombinant medicines.