Highly Effective Vaccines and Therapeutics to Prevent or Treat Hepatitis B Infections

Background

Despite great progress in antiviral treatments, hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is still a major global public health problem. Approximately 2 billion people have been infected worldwide during their lifetime, and more than 350 million are chronic carriers of the virus. HBV infection may cause acute and chronic hepatitis, which leads to incurable chronic liver problems and cancer. Current HBV vaccines on the market, which protect most people against HBV infection, contain only the S antigen. However, almost 5-10% people vaccinated with the available vaccines fail to mount an adequate antibody response to offer protection. This raises a dire need to develop novel and efficient prophylactic or therapeutic vaccines for HBV infection with lower nonresponse rates.

Technology Overview

A Georgia State University researcher and his collaborator have designed a novel prophylactic vaccine candidate by generating a virus-like particle (VLP) of the HBV preS antigen. The preS antigen on infectious HBV particles induces strong B and T cell responses and enhances the seroprotection rate by overcoming non-responsiveness to the conventional S antigen-only vaccines. These VLPs can be used alone or in combination with vaccines containing the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) to vaccinate subjects against HBV as well as to activate T cells for adoptive T cell therapy to eradicate HBV infected hepatocytes.

Further Detail

• X. Cai, et. al. (2018). Antiviral Res., 149, 48-57.

Benefits

• Pre-clinical studies demonstrated the following:
• preS VLP is able to evoke much higher antibody titers than recombinant preS, even without any adjuvants.
• Carries potential as a prophylactic and therapeutic vaccine against HBV infection in humans, especially in those nonresponsive to the conventional HBV vaccine.