Assembly and immunogenicity of coronavirus-like particles carrying infectious bronchitis virus M and S proteins

Infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) as an avian coronavirus is still posing a persistent and imminent threat to the poultry industry worldwide. Here we report that transfection of Sf9 cells with a single recombinant baculovirus encoding M and S proteins resulted in the assembly of IBV VLPs; this is the first report that S protein plus M protein alone were able to be assembled into VLPs for coronaviruses. We further showed that the generated IBV VLPs could induce humoral immune responses in a level comparable to that of inactivated IBV vaccine, and more importantly the IBV VLPs could elicit significantly higher cellular immune responses than the inactivated IBV vaccine. In summary, the assembly of IBV VLPs with M and S proteins provided a simple strategy for generating VLPs for coronaviruses, and the generated IBV VLPs laid a feasible foundation for the development of an effective vaccine against infection of IBV in the future.