Guo Huichen’s team has managed to express the same level of various viral capsid proteins in a soluble way simultaneously, thus breaking through the technical barrier of assembling intact virus-like particles (VLPs) in the liquid environment in vitro. This innovation has changed the traditional antigen preparation method that requires live viruses to produce inactivated foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) vaccines. It also has changed the antigen attributes of traditional vaccines. Their research opens a new era of safe and efficient genetic engineering vaccines for FMD. The FMD type O VLPs vaccines they developed for swine and bovine, respectively, have won two national first-class new veterinary drug registration certificates and the Chinese patent excellence award. The commercialization revenue of these two VLPs vaccines has exceeded 30 million RMB, opening up a new direction for the research and development of prevention and control products in major animal epidemic diseases.

Mechanism diagram

Electron microscope picture of VLPs

Prof. Guo Huichen