Khai Wooi Lee

Taylor's University · School of Biosciences

Virus-like particles (VLPs) is one of the most favourable subjects of study, especially in the field of nanobiotechnology and vaccine development because they possess good immunogenicity and self-adjuvant properties. Conventionally, VLPs can be tagged and purified using affinity chromatography or density gradient ultracentrifugation which is costly...

Influenza A virus poses a serious threat to human health, causing more than 650,000 deaths annually. While flu vaccines are effective in preventing infection, high rates of antigenic changes of the virus often give rise to vaccine escape mutants. Therefore, a universal vaccine that is effective against different influenza strains will produce broad...

Bacteriophages have been explored for their uses in vaccine development, due to the ease of propagation while displaying epitopes in high density. Bacteriophage T7 has been demonstrated to be useful in the production of potential vaccine candidates for various diseases, including influenza A, foot-and mouth disease (FMD), and cancers. In this chapt...

Aims: To display a short peptide (GSRSHHHHHH) at the C-terminal end of turnip yellow mosaic virus coat protein (TYMVc) and to study its assembly into virus-like particles (TYMVcHis6 VLPs). Methods and results: In this study, recombinant TYMVcHis6 expressed in E. coli self-assembled into VLPs of approximately 30-32 nm. SDS-PAGE and western blot a...

The threat of novel influenza infections has sparked research efforts to develop subunit vaccines that can induce a more broadly protective immunity by targeting selected regions of the virus. In general, subunit vaccines are safer but may be less immunogenic than whole cell inactivated or live attenuated vaccines. Hence, novel adjuvants that boost...

Turnip yellow mosaic virus (TYMV) is a Tymovirus of the Tymoviridae family which infects almost all Brassica plants. Plant viruses do not infect animal hosts; however, their cellular tropisms can be genetically modified to suit the needs for nanobiotechnological applications. In this study, the C-terminal tail of the TYMV capsid protein was extende...

Virus-like nanoparticles have been shown to be an effective platform to carry therapeutic molecules and foreign antigens for drugs and gene delivery [1,2]. TYMV is an isometric tymovirus of the Tymoviridae family. It possesses a (+) single-stranded RNA genome, packaged in 180 copies of identical coat protein (TYMVC), arranged in icosahedral, T=3 co...

Hepatitis B core protein (HBcAg) expressed in Escherichia coli is able to self-assemble into large and small capsids comprising 240 (triangulation number T = 4) and 180 (triangulation number T = 3) subunits, respectively. Conventionally, sucrose density gradient ultracentrifugation and size exclusion chromatography have been used to separate these...

Cell-internalizing peptides (CIPs) can be used to mediate specific delivery of nanoparticles across cellular membrane. The objective of this study was to develop a display technique using hepatitis B virus (HBV) capsid-binding peptide as a “nanoglue” to present CIPs on HBV nanoparticles for cell-targeting delivery. A CIP was selected from a phage d...

To display a liver-specific ligand on the hepatitis B virus core particles for cell-targeting delivery. A liver cell-binding ligand (preS1) was fused at the N-terminal end of the hepatitis B core antigen (HBcAg), but the fusion protein (preS1His(6) HBcAg) was insoluble in Escherichia coli and did not form virus-like particles (VLPs). A method to di...

The recombinant hepatitis B virus (HBV) core antigen (HBcAg) expressed in Escherichia coli self-assembles into icosahedral capsids of about 35 nm which can be exploited as gene or drug delivery vehicles. The association and dissociation properties of the C-terminally truncated HBcAg with urea and guanidine hydrochloride (GdnHCl) were studied. Trans...