Insect cell technology is a versatile and robust vaccine manufacturing platform

Abstract

Baculovirus and insect cell culture technologies have mostly been limited to research laboratories for the transient expression of target proteins for drug development purposes. With the renaissance of the vaccine field and the regulatory acceptance of recombinant DNA technology, the baculovirus expression system has been more broadly adopted for the development of subunit vaccines, including virus-like particles. In the numerous clinical trials extensively discussed and cross-referenced in this article, product quality, safety and efficacy have been demonstrated for many candidate vaccines targeting infectious diseases. The 2007 market authorization of Cervarix, a bivalent human papillomavirus virus-like particle vaccine against cervical cancer, was a critical milestone for the regulatory acceptance of insect cell technology in manufacturing human vaccines, opening the door to the approval of more baculovirus-derived vaccines. Insect cell technology is now a dominant platform for veterinary vaccines. This article covers the application of recombinant baculovirus as vectored vaccines to mediate systemic and mucosal immune responses through the display or expression of foreign antigens. We will probably observe increasingly more baculovirus-derived products and market licensing of safe and efficacious vaccines.