Adenoviral coat protein derived delivery vehicles

Abstract

The present invention relates to new adenoviral coat protein based delivery vehicles. They are based on a modified penton base protomers that assemble into VLPs. Exposed areas of the penton base proteins can be modified to allow the VLP to specifically bind to any target and/or to comprise any desired peptide epitope. Additional cargo, for example drugs, proteins, or nucleic acids, can reversibly or irreversibly attached to the VLP via engineered fibre protein fragments. The present invention relates to such engineered penton base protomers, engineered proteins comprising an adenovirus fibre protein N-terminal fragment specifically binding to an adenovirus fibre protein binding cleft of a penton base protomer, VLPs comprising the engineered penton base protomers and optionally engineered proteins comprising an adenovirus fibre protein N-terminal fragment specifically binding to an adenovirus fibre protein binding cleft of a penton base protomer, nucleic encoding the engineered proteins, the VLPs as well as methods of producing the proteins and VLPs.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.