Improvement of PVX/CMV CP expression tool for display of short foreign antigens

We have previously reported that Potato virus X-expressed coat protein of Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) formed virus-like particles (VLPs), which served as carriers for display of different neutralizing epitopes of Newcastle disease virus (NDV). In this work, we further modified the purification protocol of recombinant VLPs carrying short neutralizing epitopes of the NDV proteins and demonstrated that self-contained capsid protein subunits of CMV transiently expressed from heterologous virus packaged into individual virions morphologically resembling and/or indistinguishable from wild type CMV particles. Homogeneity of the final preparation represents an advance over our previous study, where VLPs were found to be of variable size. Chickens immunized with purified VLPs developed antigen-specific response.