One-Step Purification Strategy for Cowpea Chlorotic Mottle Virus-Like Particles Produced by the IC-BEVS

Abstract

Virus-like particles (VLP) of the cowpea chlorotic mottle virus (CCMV), a plant virus, have been shown to be safe and noncytotoxic vehicles for delivering various cargos, including nucleic acids and peptides, and as scaffolds for presenting epitopes. Thus, CCMV-VLP have acquired increasing attention to be used in fields such as gene therapy, drug delivery, and vaccine development. Regardless of their production method, most reports purify CCMV-VLP through a series of ultracentrifugation steps using sucrose density gradient ultracentrifugation, which is a complex and time-consuming process. Here, the use of anion exchange chromatography is described as a one-step protocol for purification of CCMV-VLP produced by the insect cell-baculovirus expression vector system (IC-BEVS).

Keywords: Anion exchange chromatography; Cowpea Chlorotic Mottle Virus (CCMV); Insect Cell-Baculovirus Expression Vector System (IC-BEVS); Purification; Virus-Like Particles (VLP).