Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2020 Dec 3:11:609207.
doi: 10.3389/fpls.2020.609207. eCollection 2020.

A Roadmap for the Molecular Farming of Viral Glycoprotein Vaccines: Engineering Glycosylation and Glycosylation-Directed Folding

Affiliations
Review

A Roadmap for the Molecular Farming of Viral Glycoprotein Vaccines: Engineering Glycosylation and Glycosylation-Directed Folding

Emmanuel Margolin et al. Front Plant Sci. .

Abstract

Immunization with recombinant glycoprotein-based vaccines is a promising approach to induce protective immunity against viruses. However, the complex biosynthetic maturation requirements of these glycoproteins typically necessitate their production in mammalian cells to support their folding and post-translational modification. Despite these clear advantages, the incumbent costs and infrastructure requirements with this approach can be prohibitive in developing countries, and the production scales and timelines may prove limiting when applying these production systems to the control of pandemic viral outbreaks. Plant molecular farming of viral glycoproteins has been suggested as a cheap and rapidly scalable alternative production system, with the potential to perform post-translational modifications that are comparable to mammalian cells. Consequently, plant-produced glycoprotein vaccines for seasonal and pandemic influenza have shown promise in clinical trials, and vaccine candidates against the newly emergent severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 have entered into late stage preclinical and clinical testing. However, many other viral glycoproteins accumulate poorly in plants, and are not appropriately processed along the secretory pathway due to differences in the host cellular machinery. Furthermore, plant-derived glycoproteins often contain glycoforms that are antigenically distinct from those present on the native virus, and may also be under-glycosylated in some instances. Recent advances in the field have increased the complexity and yields of biologics that can be produced in plants, and have now enabled the expression of many viral glycoproteins which could not previously be produced in plant systems. In contrast to the empirical optimization that predominated during the early years of molecular farming, the next generation of plant-made products are being produced by developing rational, tailor-made approaches to support their production. This has involved the elimination of plant-specific glycoforms and the introduction into plants of elements of the biosynthetic machinery from different expression hosts. These approaches have resulted in the production of mammalian N-linked glycans and the formation of O-glycan moieties in planta. More recently, plant molecular engineering approaches have also been applied to improve the glycan occupancy of proteins which are not appropriately glycosylated, and to support the folding and processing of viral glycoproteins where the cellular machinery differs from the usual expression host of the protein. Here we highlight recent achievements and remaining challenges in glycoengineering and the engineering of glycosylation-directed folding pathways in plants, and discuss how these can be applied to produce recombinant viral glycoproteins vaccines.

Keywords: calnexin; calreticulin; chaperones; folding; glycosylation; occupancy; oligosaccaryltransferase; processing.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

EM, AM, and ER have filed a patent describing the co-expression of chaperone proteins to improve the production of heterologous polypeptides in plants. The remaning authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Potential impact of under glycosylation on the immunogenicity of a plant-produced viral glycoprotein. In scenario 1 immunization results in the induction of antibodies which target an epitope on the recombinant protein that is obscured by a glycan in the wildtype virus. Therefore, the antibodies induced are unable to neutralize the virus as this epitope is masked. Alternately, antibodies may target strain-specific holes in the glycan shield distracting the immune response from epitopes that are targets of broadly neutralizing antibodies. In scenario 2, lower glycan occupation exposes hydrophobic stretches of the protein which are usually shielded by glycans. This results in protein aggregation which occludes important epitopes of the protein for immunization. In scenario 3, poor glycan occupancy precludes recognition by ER-resident chaperones which mediate glycoprotein folding. This results in misfolded protein which may elicit a high magnitude immune response that is not protective (CRT, calreticulin).
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Glycoengineering approaches to produce authentic viral N-glycan (A) and O-glycan (B) structures in plants. In (A) typical plant-derived complex, Lewis A and paucimannosidic glycans are depicted. In order to produce authentic viral-type glycosylation plant-specific glycan processing events need to be eliminated. This involves knocking out the activity of α1,3-fucosyltransferase (Δα1,3-FucT) and β1,2-xylosyltransferase (Δβ1,2-XylT) to prevent the formation of plant-specific complex glycans. Similarly, mitigating the activities of β1,3-galactosyltransferase (GalT) will prevent the formation of Lewis A glycans. Lastly, suppression of β-hexosaminidase 3 (ΔHEXO3) will avoid processing to yield paucimannosic structures. These approaches may need to be combined with strategies to improve the glycan occupancy, such as by engineering the host sequence or by expressing heterologous oligosaccaryltransferases. The resulting glycan core can then serve as a substrate to generate tailor-made glycoforms. The co-expression of the necessary glycosyltransferases will support the formation of native viral extensions; including α1,6-fucosylation, β1,4-galactosylation and α-2,6-sialylation. The efficiency of the glycosyltransferases may be variable in planta and could result in partial occupancy (indicated by ). In (B) the elimination of prolyl 4-hydroxylases (ΔP4H) will prevent the undesired conversion of proline to hydroxyproline. Subsequently, the biosynthetic machinery required for mucin-type glycosylation can be expressed in planta to yield viral glycoforms with typical extensions.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Chaperone-mediated folding of viral glycoproteins in the ER. Following translation, the nascent protein enters into the ER through the translocon pore (SEC61) and is glycosylated by the membrane-bound oligosaccaryltransferase complex. Processing of the glycan by α-glucosidase I (GI), to remove the outermost glucose residue, enables recognition by Malectin. The removal of a second glucose yields a monoglucosylated structure that is the substrate for the lectin binding chaperones: calnexin (CNX) and calreticulin (CRT). These chaperones recruit other folding partners, such as the oxidoreductase ERp57, to support glycoprotein folding. Once the glycoprotein is appropriately folded the final glucose is removed by GII to release the protein from the CNX/CRT folding cycle. The glycoprotein can then traffic into the Golgi apparatus for further modifications, including proteolytic cleavage and glycan maturation. In contrast, aberrantly-folded glycoproteins are reglucosylated by UDP:glucose glycoprotein glycosyltransferase (UGGT) causing their retention in the CNX/CRT folding pathway for another round of chaperone-mediated folding. Terminally misfolded proteins are eventually targeted for Endoplasmic reticulum-associated degradation (ERAD) to prevent misfolded proteins progressing through the secretory pathway. A single glycan is depicted for simplicity.

Similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Adams B. M., Oster M. E., Hebert D. N. (2019). Protein quality control in the endoplasmic reticulum. Prot. J. 38 317–329. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Allen J. D., Sanders R. W., Doores K. J., Crispin M. (2018). Harnessing post-translational modifications for next-generation HIV immunogens. Biochem. Soc. Trans. 46 691–698. 10.1042/bst20170394 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Arnold D. F., Misbah S. A. (2008). Cetuximab-induced anaphylaxis and IgE specific for galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose. N. Engl. J. Med. 358 2735–2736. 10.1056/nejmc080834 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bagdonaite I., Wandall H. H. (2018). Global aspects of viral glycosylation. Glycobiology 28 443–467. 10.1093/glycob/cwy021 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Beck A., Reichert J. M. (2012). Marketing approval of mogamulizumab: a triumph for glyco-engineering. MAbs 4 419–425. 10.4161/mabs.20996 - DOI - PMC - PubMed