Plant virus-derived nanoparticles decorated with genetically encoded SARS-CoV-2 nanobodies display enhanced neutralizing activity

Viral nanoparticles (VNPs) are a new class of virus-based formulations that can be used as building blocks to implement a variety of functions of potential interest in biotechnology and nanomedicine. Viral coat proteins (CP) that exhibit self-assembly properties are particularly appropriate for displaying antigens and antibodies, by generating multivalent VNPs with therapeutic and diagnostic potential. Here, we developed genetically encoded multivalent VNPs derived from two filamentous plant viruses, potato virus X (PVX) and tobacco etch virus (TEV), which were efficiently and inexpensively produced in the biofactory Nicotiana benthamiana plant. PVX and TEV-derived VNPs were decorated with two different nanobodies recognizing two different regions of the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein. The addition of different picornavirus 2A ribosomal skipping peptides between the nanobody and the CP allowed for modulating the degree of VNP decoration. Nanobody-decorated VNPs purified from N. benthamiana tissues successfully recognized the RBD antigen in enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays and showed efficient neutralization activity against pseudoviruses carrying the Spike protein. Interestingly, multivalent PVX and TEV-derived VNPs exhibited a neutralizing activity approximately one order of magnitude higher than the corresponding nanobody in a dimeric format. These properties, combined with the ability to produce VNP cocktails in the same N. benthamiana plant based on synergistic infection of the parent PVX and TEV, make these green nanomaterials an attractive alternative to standard antibodies for multiple applications in diagnosis and therapeutics.

Three methods for inoculation of viral vectors into plants

Agriculture is facing new challenges, with global warming modifying the survival chances for crops, and new pests on the horizon. To keep up with these challenges, gene delivery provides tools to increase crop yields. On the other hand, gene delivery also opens the door for molecular farming of pharmaceuticals in plants. However, towards increased food production and scalable molecular farming, there remain technical difficulties and regulatory hurdles to overcome. The industry-standard is transformation of plants via Agrobacterium tumefaciens, but this method is limited to certain plants, requires set up of plant growth facilities and fermentation of bacteria, and introduces lipopolysaccharides contaminants into the system. Therefore, alternate methods are needed. Mechanical inoculation and spray methods have already been discussed in the literature - and here, we compare these methods with a newly introduced petiole injection technique. Because our interest lies in the development of plant viruses as immunotherapies targeting human health as well as gene delivery vectors for agriculture applications, we turned toward tobacco mosaic virus as a model system. We studied the effectiveness of three inoculation techniques: mechanical inoculation, Silwet-77 foliar spray and petiole injections. The foliar spray method was optimized, and we used 0.03% Silwet L-77 to induce infection using either TMV or a lysine-added mutant TMV-Lys. We developed a method using a needle-laden syringe to target and inject the plant virus directly into the vasculature of the plant - we tested injection into the stem and petiole. Stem inoculation resulted in toxicity, but the petiole injection technique was established as a viable strategy. TMV and TMV-Lys were purified from single plants and pooled leaf samples - overall there was little variation between the techniques, as measured by TMV or TMV-Lys yields, highlighting the feasibility of the syringe injection technique to produce virus nanoparticles. There was variation between yields from preparation to preparation with mechanical, spray and syringe inoculation yielding 40-141 mg, 36-56 mg, 18-56 mg TMV per 100 grams of leaves. Similar yields were obtained using TMV-Lys, with 24-38 mg, 17-28, 7-36 mg TMV-Lys per 100 grams of leaves for mechanical, spray and syringe inoculation, respectively. Each method has its advantages: spray inoculation is highly scalable and therefore may find application for farming, the syringe inoculation could provide a clean, aseptic, and controlled approach for molecular farming of pharmaceuticals under good manufacturing protocols (GMP) and would even be applicable for gene delivery to plants in space.

Biofabrication of muscle fibers enhanced with plant viral nanoparticles using surface chaotic flows

Multiple human tissues exhibit fibrous nature. Therefore, the fabrication of hydrogel filaments for tissue engineering is a trending topic. Current tissue models are made of materials that often require further enhancement for appropriate cell attachment, proliferation and differentiation. Here we present a simple strategy, based on the use of surface chaotic flows amenable to mathematical modeling, to fabricate continuous, long and thin filaments of gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA). The fabrication of these filaments is achieved by chaotic advection in a finely controlled and miniaturized version of the journal bearing system. A drop of GelMA pregel is injected on a higher-density viscous fluid (glycerin) and a chaotic flow is applied through an iterative process. The millimeter-scale hydrogel drop is exponentially deformed and elongated to generate a meter-scale fiber, which was then polymerized under UV-light exposure. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations are conducted to determine the characteristics of the flow and design the experimental conditions for fabrication of the fibers. GelMA fibers were effectively used as scaffolds for C2C12 myoblast cells. Experimental results demonstrate an accurate accordance with CFD simulations for the predicted length of the fibers. Plant-based viral nanoparticles (i.e.Turnip mosaic virus; TuMV) were then integrated to the hydrogel fibers as a secondary nano-scaffold for cells for enhanced muscle tissue engineering. The addition of TuMV significantly increased the metabolic activity of the cell-seeded fibers (p* < 0.05), strengthened cell attachment throughout the first 28 d, improved cell alignment, and promoted the generation of structures that resemble natural mammal muscle tissues. Chaotic two-dimensional-printing is proven to be a viable method for the fabrication of hydrogel fibers. The combined use of thin and long GelMA hydrogel fibers enhanced with flexuous virions offers a promising alternative for scaffolding of muscle cells and show potential to be used as cost-effective models for muscle tissue engineering purposes.

Tobacco Mosaic Viral Nanoparticle Inhibited Osteoclastogenesis Through Inhibiting mTOR/AKT Signaling

INTRODUCTION

Tobacco mosaic virus-based nanoparticles (TMV VNPs) were previously shown to promote osteogenic differentiation in vitro. This study aims to investigate whether and how TMV VNPs impact on osteoclastogenesis in vitro and bone injury healing in vivo.

METHODS

Raw264.7 cells were cultured in osteoclastogenic medium in culture plates coated with or without TMV and TMV-RGD1 VNPs, followed by TRAP staining, RT-qPCR and WB assessing expression of osteoclastogenic marker genes, and immunofluorescence assessing NF-κB activation. TMV and TMV-RGD1-modified hyaluronic acid hydrogel were used to treat mouse tibial bone injury. Bone injury healing was checked by micro-CT and Masson staining.

RESULTS

TMV and TMV-RGD1 VNPs significantly inhibited osteoclast differentiation and downregulated the expression of osteoclastogenic marker genes Ctr, Ctsk, Mmp-9, Rank, and Trap. Moreover, TMV and TMV-RGD1 VNPs inhibited NF-κB p65 phosphorylation and nuclear translocation, as well as activation of mTOR/AKT signaling pathway. TMV and TMV-RGD1-modified HA hydrogel strongly promoted mouse tibial bone injury with increased bone mass compared to plain HA hydrogel. The amount of osteoclasts was significantly reduced in TMV and TMV-RGD1 treated mice. TMV-RGD1 was more effective than TMV in inhibiting osteoclast differentiation and promoting bone injury repair.

DISCUSSION

These data demonstrated the great potential of TMV VNPs to be developed into biomaterial for bone injury repair or replacement.

A Viral Nanoparticle Cancer Vaccine Delays Tumor Progression and Prolongs Survival in a HER2+ Tumor Mouse Model

Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) overexpression is associated with aggressive tumors with increased incidence of metastasis and recurrence. Therapeutic antibodies such as Trastuzumab inhibit tumor growth through blockade of HER2 receptors. However, the short lifespan of such therapeutic antibodies necessitates repeat administrations with ensuing cardiac toxicity and development of resistance, while offering no protection against relapse. Cancer vaccines targeting HER2 can overcome these shortcomings of passive immunotherapy by instigating an endogenous and sustained immune response and memory against the cancer antigen. The efficacy of a viral nanoparticle (VNP)-based cancer vaccine is demonstrated here in activating a potent anti-HER2 immune response that delays progression of primary tumors as well as metastases and prolongs survival in mice. The results illustrate that the VNP-based vaccine instigates HER2-specific antibodies as well as effector and memory T cells, which contributes to the effectiveness of the vaccine. Given the highly aggressive course of HER2+ cancers, inhibition of disease progression by such cancer vaccines could provide a critical window for interventions with other adjuvant therapies. Moreover, the immune memory generated by this viral nanoparticle-based cancer vaccine could mitigate relapse of the disease.

Biodegradable Viral Nanoparticle/Polymer Implants Prepared via Melt-Processing

Viral nanoparticles have been utilized as a platform for vaccine development and are a versatile system for the display of antigenic epitopes for a variety of disease states. However, the induction of a clinically relevant immune response often requires multiple injections over an extended period of time, limiting patient compliance. Polymeric systems to deliver proteinaceous materials have been extensively researched to provide sustained release, which would limit administration to a single dose. Melt-processing is an emerging manufacturing method that has been utilized to create polymeric materials laden with proteins as an alternative to typical solvent-based production methods. Melt-processing is advantageous because it is continuous, solvent-free, and 100% of the therapeutic protein is encapsulated. In this study, we utilized melt-encapsulation to fabricate viral nanoparticle laden polymeric materials that effectively deliver intact particles and generate carrier specific antibodies in vivo. The effects of initial processing and postprocessing on particle integrity and aggregation were studied to develop processing windows for scale-up and the creation of more complex materials. The dispersion of particles within the PLGA matrix was studied, and the effect of additives and loading level on the release profile was determined. Overall, melt-encapsulation was found to be an effective method to produce composite materials that can deliver viral nanoparticles over an extended period and elicit an immune response comparable to typical administration schedules.

CPMV-DOX delivers

The plant virus, Cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV), is developed as a carrier of the chemotherapeutic drug doxorubicin (DOX). CPMV-DOX conjugate, in which eighty DOX molecules are covalently bound to external surface carboxylates of the viral nanoparticle (VNP), shows greater cytotoxicity than free DOX toward HeLa cells when administered at low dosage. At higher concentrations, CPMV-DOX cytotoxicity is time-delayed. The CPMV conjugate is targeted to the endolysosomal compartment of the cells, in which the proteinaceous drug carrier is degraded and the drug released. This study is the first demonstrating the utility of CPMV as a drug delivery vehicle.

Tobacco mosaic virus rods and spheres as supramolecular high-relaxivity MRI contrast agents

To compensate for the low sensitivity of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), nanoparticles have been developed to deliver high payloads of contrast agents to sites of disease. Here, we report the development of supramolecular MRI contrast agents using the plant viral nanoparticle tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). Rod-shaped TMV nanoparticles measuring 300×18 nm were loaded with up to 3,500 or 2,000 chelated paramagnetic gadolinium (III) ions selectively at the interior (iGd-TMV) or exterior (eGd-TMV) surface, respectively. Spatial control is achieved through targeting either tyrosine or carboxylic acid side chains on the solvent exposed exterior or interior TMV surface. The ionic T₁ relaxivity per Gd ion (at 60 MHz) increases from 4.9 mM^-1s^-1 for free Gd(DOTA) to 18.4 mM^-1s^-1 for eGd-TMV and 10.7 mM^-1s^-1 for iGd-TMV. This equates to T₁ values of ~ 30,000 mM^-1s^-1 and ~ 35,000 mM^-1s^-1 per eGd-TMV and iGd-TMV nanoparticle. Further, we show that interior-labeled TMV rods can undergo thermal transition to form 170 nm-sized spherical nanoparticles containing ~ 25,000 Gd chelates and a per particle relaxivity of almost 400,000 mM^-1s^-1 (15.2 mM^-1s^-1 per Gd). This work lays the foundation for the use of TMV as a contrast agent for MRI.