Bacterial Outer Membrane Vesicles as a Platform for the Development of a Broadly Protective Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Based on the Minor Capsid Protein L2

Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are a large family of viruses with a capsid composed of the L1 and L2 proteins, which bind to receptors of the basal epithelial cells and promote virus entry. The majority of sexually active people become exposed to HPV and the virus is the most common cause of cervical cancer. Vaccines are available based on the L1 protein, which self-assembles and forms virus-like particles (VLPs) when expressed in yeast and insect cells. Although very effective, these vaccines are HPV type-restricted and their costs limit broad vaccination campaigns. Recently, vaccine candidates based on the conserved L2 epitope from serotypes 16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 6, 51, and 59 were shown to elicit broadly neutralizing anti-HPV antibodies. In this study, we tested whether E. coli outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) could be successfully decorated with L2 polytopes and whether the engineered OMVs could induce neutralizing antibodies. OMVs represent an attractive vaccine platform owing to their intrinsic adjuvanticity and their low production costs. We show that strings of L2 epitopes could be efficiently expressed on the surface of the OMVs and a polypeptide composed of the L2 epitopes from serotypes 18, 33, 35, and 59 provided a broad cross-protective activity against a large panel of HPV serotypes as determined using pseudovirus neutralization assay. Considering the simplicity of the OMV production process, our work provides a highly effective and inexpensive solution to produce universal anti-HPV vaccines.