Env Exp Biol (2013) 11: 1–8

Virus-like particles addressed by HBV preS1 sequences

Abstract

Targeted delivery of drugs to specific cells is one of the goals of modern nanomedicine. One of the strategies for achieving this is developing small nanocontainers capable of transporting the desired substance to target cells. Virus-like particles (VLPs) have moved forward as perspective delivery tools because of their ability to encapsidate different substances with potential therapeutic effect. VLPs can be easily produced in a large-scale, and their surface can be decorated with different factors mediating the recognition and binding to target cells. We propose the hepatitis B virus preS1 sequence as a potential delivery address. PreS1 is a fragment of HBV L surface protein, and is known for being the main viral specificity determinant. In the current study we focused on virus-like particles derived from bacteriophage AP205 coat protein and hepatitis B virus core proteins. We tested the interaction of preS1 decorated VLP with HepG2, Hek293, Jurkat, Namalwa and BHK-21 eukaryotic cell lines. We found that full-length preS1 can mediate VLP uptake into cells. However, the nature of preS1-mediated VLP uptake is cell-line unspecific and has low efficiency.