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Characterizing Vaccines and Viruses Using Transmission Electron Microscopy
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H1N1 vaccine courtesy of MedImmune LLC. Image of sample prepared in negative stain at 52,000x magnification. Scale bar: 200nm.
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The CDC recently announced that work has begun to make a seed vaccine against H7N9 as a cautionary response to several recent cases of the virus in humans, primarily in China. In order to avoid any delay in production, manufacturers of the new vaccines will want to ensure rapid optimization and verification of the vaccine.
NanoImaging Services has considerable experience with imaging, characterizing and quantifiably analyzing a wide variety of vaccines, viruses and virus like particles, including notably H1N1, an influenza A virus subtype that was responsible for the 2009 flu pandemic. NIS uses transmission electron microscopy to directly visualize particles in the vaccine or virus sample, as illustrated in the image above showing H1N1 (courtesy of MedImmune, Inc.). The overall morphology of the viruses can be clearly seen, revealing a range of sizes and shapes, and providing details on the integrity and degree of preservation of the surface proteins. These characteristics of the vaccine can be quantified across different manufacturing lots using size distribution, fraction counting and viral particle titer studies to determine the range of sizes, percentage of intact viruses, particle titer in each sample. These analyses provide powerful orthogonal data that can help speed up optimization of the vaccine.
NIS has worked on a wide variety of other vaccines and virus like particles. A few recent papers in the literature describing aspects of this work include:
- Mulder AM, Carragher B, Towne V, Meng Y, Wang Y, Dieter L, Potter CS, Washabaugh MW, Sitrin RD, Zhao Q. Toolbox for non-intrusive structural and functional analysis of recombinant VLP based vaccines: a case study with hepatitis B vaccine. PloS one. 2012;7(4):e33235.
- Zhao Q, Modis Y, High K, Towne V, Meng Y, Wang Y, Alexandroff J, Brown M, Carragher B, Potter CS, Abraham D, Wohlpart D, Kosinski M, Washabaugh MW, Sitrin RD. Disassembly and reassembly of human papillomavirus virus-like particles produces more virion-like antibody reactivity. Virology journal. 2012;9:52.
- Agadjanian H, Chu D, Hwang JY, Wachsmann- Hogiu S, Rentsendorj A, Song L, Valluripalli V, Lubow J, Ma J, Sharifi B, Farkas DL, Medina-Kauwe LK. Chemotherapy targeting by DNA capture in viral protein particles. Nanomedicine (Lond). 2012;7(3):335-52.
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- Feshchenko E, Rhodes DG, Felberbaum R, McPherson C, Rininger JA, Post P, Cox MM. Pandemic influenza vaccine: characterization of A/California/07/2009 (H1N1) recombinant hemagglutinin protein and insights into H1N1 antigen stability. BMC biotechnology. 2012;12:77.
- Fox CB, Barnes VL, Evers T, Chesko JD, Vedvick TS, Coler RN, Reed SG, Baldwin SL. Adjuvanted pandemic influenza vaccine: variation of emulsion components affects stability, antigen structure, and vaccine efficacy. Influenza and other respiratory viruses. 2012.
- Hao W, Bernard K, Patel N, Ulbrandt N, Feng H, Svabek C, Wilson S, Stracener C, Wang K, Suzich J, Blair W, Zhu Q. Infection and propagation of human rhinovirus C in human airway epithelial cells. Journal of virology. 2012;86(24):13524-32.
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NanoImaging Services will be attending the following upcoming meetings. If you are attending, please stop by or contact us to make an appointment.
May 20-22 AAPS Biotech, San Diego, CA
NanoImaging Services will be exhibiting at booth number 619.
July 8-11, Colorado Protein Stability Conference, Breckenridge, CO
NanoImaging Services will be presenting a poster on Characterization of Antibodies and Antibody Aggregation.
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NanoImaging Services
11099 North Torrey Pines Rd., #250
San Diego, CA 92037
(888) 675-8261
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