Abstract
Mouse Polyomavirus has a potential to become a versatile tool for gene therapy and vaccine production. Its structural proteins are able to form virus-like particles (VLPs) when produced in baculovirus expression system.
We propose several lines of research for VLPs utilization in clinical application: i)VLPs for anti-cancer vaccine production: We try to modify the VLPs with previously identified prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) epitopes that can activate cytotoxic T lymphocytes. ii) VLPs for cancer cells targeting: We plan to introduce short peptides that bound selectively to PSMA into the VP1 protein to target VLPs specifically to prostate cancer cells. iii)VLPs for cancer diagnostics. We explore the idea of using the VLPs with modified (PSMA targeted) or unmodified VP1 protein for the development of nanometer scale Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents for cancer diagnostics.