Browsing by Author "Chabeda, Aleyo"

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    Development of West Nile virus candidate vaccines in Nicotiana benthamiana
    (2021) Wayland, Jennifer; Meyers, Ann; Chabeda, Aleyo; Rybicki, Ed
    West Nile virus (WNV) is a widely disseminated flavivirus, with a geographical range that now includes Africa, America, Europe, the Middle East, West Asia and Australia. The virus is vectored by Culex mosquitoes and is maintained in a bird-mosquito transmission cycle with hundreds of bird species acting as reservoir hosts. In humans, infections can develop into febrile illness and severe meningoencephalitis and to date, there is no treatment or vaccine available. In horses, approximately 20% of infections are symptomatic, of which 90% of cases involve neurological disease, with 30-40% fatality rates. Several veterinary vaccines specific to the lineage 1 WNV strains are commercially produced in America and Europe, however, these vaccines are not easily obtainable for low and middle-income countries (LMIC) due to their high cost and that associated with importation as well as the need for annual vaccination. Due to continuous global disease outbreaks in birds, humans and horse populations with no preventative measures for humans, WNV poses a major public health threat, especially in naïve populations. The development of a vaccine that contributes to the ‘One Health' Initiative could be the answer to prevent the spread of the virus and control the disease. Current veterinary vaccines are produced in expensive cell culture systems that require sterile conditions, high-level biosafety facilities and trained personnel for their preparation. Transient plant-based expression systems have proven to be a very cost-effective means of making complex proteins. Plants can produce and modify proteins in a similar manner to mammalian cells and production does not require sterile conditions or specialised facilities. We propose that plants could be a viable means of making feasible, low-cost reagents for WNV, specifically virus-like particles (VLPs) for use as vaccines in South Africa and other LMIC. In this study, we set out to develop two particulate candidate vaccines based on a virulent South African WNV strain using Nicotiana benthamiana as the expression platform. We aimed to develop the first candidate vaccine by exploiting the virus's ability to form noninfectious VLPs by expressing only the WNV membrane (prM – precursor, M – matured) and envelope (E) proteins. Infiltration of these recombinant plasmids into plants yielded no protein expression unless co-expressed with the human chaperone protein calnexin (CNX), upon which expression of both M and E proteins were observed. We investigated the assembly of prM and E into VLPs by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), however, purification of these particles proved difficult with poor reproducibility and VLP yield. This led to the development of an alternative candidate vaccine making use of the antigendisplay technology based on the SpyTag (ST) and SpyCatcher (SC) peptides. The immunodominant epitope of the WNV E protein, domain III (EdIII), was selected for antigen display. Two constructs of the EdIII gene were generated, one with the SC peptide on the 5'- (SC-EdIII) and the other on the 3' end (EdIII-SC). Both SC-EdIII and EdIII-SC proteins were successfully expressed in the presence of the human chaperone protein calreticulin, and purified with yields of 9 mg/kg and 69 mg/kg fresh leaf weight (FLW), respectively. The VLP core selected for the display of the SC-linked EdIII proteins comprised the coat protein of the bacteriophage AP205 with the ST peptide linked to its N-terminus (ST-AP205). Spytagged-VLPs were purified by density gradient ultracentrifugation at a yield of approximately 50 mg/kg FLW. The purified SC-linked EdIII proteins and ST-AP205 VLPs were coupled in vitro, but successful complex formation of AP205:EdIII was only observed between ST-AP205 and EdIII-SC and not when the SC peptide was located on the N-terminus of EdIII. We further demonstrated the successful complex formation of AP205:EdIII in vivo by coinfiltration of the EdIII-SC and ST-AP205 constructs, as well as by extracting leaves of plants infiltrated individually with either of the constructs. Due to the ease of purification and the high yields of AP205:EdIII achieved, the co-extraction process was optimised to obtain the best coupling yield possible by evaluating different FLW extraction ratios and the formation of VLPs was confirmed by TEM. The optimal co-extraction process was established at a FLW ratio of 1:2 ST-AP205 to EdIII-SC yielding approximately 23 mg/kg AP205:EdIII/FLW processed. In this study, we describe the successful production of two particulate candidate vaccines. The first is based on the expression of the WNV prM and E genes in the presence of human CNX and the second is based on the ST/SC antigen-display technology. These outcomes exhibit the potential plants have of being used as biofactories for making significant pharmaceutical products for the ‘One Health' Initiative and could be used to address the need for their local production in LMIC.
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    The Expression of Chikungunya Virus Envelope 2 Glycoprotein Variants in Nicotiana benthamiana for the Development of a Diagnostic Reagent
    (2020) Naude, Jason Christopher Delville; Meyers, Ann Elizabeth; Chabeda, Aleyo
    Chikungunya fever is a non-fatal but highly debilitating disease that affects primates, birds and humans. The causative agent is the chikungunya virus (CHIKV), an arbovirus of the Alphavirus genus. CHIKV is responsible for the largest epidemic recorded for an Alphavirus, infecting an estimated 1.4 to 6 million patients worldwide. Furthermore, it has been recognised by the United States army as a potential biological weapon used for bioterrorism owing to the potential for infection via aerosol. CHIKV is primarily transmitted by infected Aedes aegypti mosquitos and is currently distributed in Africa, parts of Asia and South, Central and North America. As a result of the virus genetically adapting to infect the Aedes albopictus mosquito, its recent and rapid spread to non-endemic regions has occasioned increasing anxiety as well. Infection in humans presents as a sudden onset of fever, rash and severe arthralgia that persists for years. At present, there is no fast and effective diagnostic test to distinguish CHIKV from other similar viruses. This is a problem because viral infection displays the same symptoms as that of dengue, Zika, Ebola and yellow fevers while prognosis, patient care, and persistent symptoms of these viruses are very different. Usually, during the development of a diagnostic reagent, Biosafety Level 3 (BSL3) containment is required for purifying antigens from live viruses. These lab diagnostic tests are expensive to perform and, in regions facing a CHIKV epidemic, are inefficient due to their long waiting periods. This results in patients going undiagnosed or misdiagnosed and/or falling outside the window of prophylactic treatment. As such, a cheap and rapid diagnostic reagent to detect the presence of CHIKV antibodies would be most advantageous. In this study, two recombinant variants of the CHIKV E2 glycoprotein were expressed in Nicotiana benthamiana plants to assess their viability for use in a diagnostic reagent for CHIKV infection. Two versions of a tobacco sp. codon-optimised, 6xhis-tagged CHIKV E2 envelope glycoprotein gene were synthesised and cloned into the plant expression vector, pTRAkc-ERH. The E2 glycoprotein is a desirable protein candidate used for a diagnostic reagent as it is a major target for neutralizing antibody production against CHIKV during early infection. One variant contained a ~52 kDa full length E2 glycoprotein (CHIKV E2-HIS) while the other contained a ~49 kDa truncated E2 glycoprotein lacking its transmembrane domain (CHIKV E2ΔTM-HIS). Following this, an expression time trial was performed whereby the recombinant proteins were expressed in N. benthamiana plants via Agrobacterium-mediated small-scale 6 syringe-infiltration at different optical densities, OD600 = 1.0 and 0.5. To improve expression, both genes were co-infiltrated and co-expressed with a human chaperone proteins calreticulin (CRT) or calnexin (CNX), or a plant silencing-suppressor protein NSs. Expression of the recombinant protein variants alone showed low to undetectable levels of expression in plant leaves across 7 days post infiltration (dpi) for both ODs tested. CHIKV E2ΔTM-HIS yielded the highest levels of all combinations tested at an OD600 = 1.0 when co-expressed with CRT and harvested at 3 dpi. These parameters were used for subsequent scaling up and production of E2 using vacuum infiltration. Attempts at purifying CHIKV E2ΔTM-HIS proteins using Ni-NTA affinity chromatography and further investigation into the exposure of the 6xHis-tag on the native conformation of CHIKV E2ΔTM-HIS indicated that the 6xHis-tag was insufficiently exposed on E2 and thus inaccessible to facilitate purification by Ni-NTA affinity chromatography. Further attempts at purifying recombinant CHIKV E2ΔTM-HIS proteins by pH purification were also unsuccessful as large amounts of plant-protein contaminants present in all samples prevented adequate separation from CHIKV E2ΔTM-HIS. A different approach utilising ammonium sulphate precipitation facilitated separation of recombinant CHIKV E2ΔTM-HIS from some of the contaminating plant proteins in the 30 - 60% ammonium sulphate fraction; however, large amounts of recombinant CRT were co-purified with E2 in this fraction. Although expression of a candidate diagnostic reagent in plants for detecting CHIKV antibodies in the form of E2 glycoprotein was achieved, further research needs to be done to optimise a purification strategy for CHIKV E2ΔTM-HIS proteins.