Efficient generation and characterization of chimeric dengue viral-like particles

Viral-like particles (VLPs) because of their non-infectious and high immunogenic properties have important applications in diagnostics, drug delivery, and vaccine production. They also serve as an attractive model system to study virus assembly and fusion processes. Unlike other flaviviruses, Dengue virus (DENV) is not very efficient in the production of VLPs on the expression of DENV structural proteins. On the other hand, the stem region and transmembrane region (TM) of G protein of Vesicular Stomatitis virus (VSV) alone are sufficient for budding. Here we generated chimeric VLPs replacing regions of stem and transmembrane domain (STEM) or only transmembrane domain (TM) of E protein of DENV-2 with corresponding regions of VSV G protein. Both chimeric proteins secreted VLPs at higher levels than the wild type (2–4 folds) without any significant change in the expression in the cell. Chimeric VLPs could be recognized by a conformational monoclonal antibody, 4G2. They were also found to interact with dengue-infected patient sera effectively thus implying that their antigenic determinants are preserved. In addition, they were able to bind to its putative receptor, heparin with similar affinity as the parent counterpart thus retaining its functional property. However, cell-cell fusion revealed that there is no significant increase in the fusion ability of chimeras as compared to the parent clone, whereas VSV G protein displayed high cell-cell fusion activity. Overall, this study suggests that chimeric dengue VLPs can be taken forward for their likely potential as vaccine production and serodiagnosis.