Viral Antigens

What are viral antigens?

Viral genome encodes many proteins to maintain the virus structure and function. The virus surface proteins and virus released toxic substance stimulate an immune response in its host. Those proteins  that activate host’s immunological response, are called viral antigens.

What viral antigens used for?

Viral antigens are used in viral detection, anti-viral antibody development, vaccine validation and so on.

Gentarget’s lentivirus products express a viral antigen:

Gentarget developed a lentivirus product line that express a specific viral antigen. The antigen is expressed under the enhanced CMV promoter for highest expression level in most cell types, or under an enhanced EF1a promoter for those cell types having weak CMV promoter strength or promoter silencing. Each lentivirus contains an internal Red Fluorescent Protein report (RFP) for monitoring the lentivirus transformation rate in your assay cell type. It also contains the Blasticidin antibiotic selection marker which allow to select the transduced positive cells for long term viral antigen expression in your cell line.  see lentivector core structure scheme below.

Depend upon each product, the viral antigen may also be expressed with the C-terminal 6His tag, for easy antigen purification by Ni NTA (nickel-charged affinity resin) column. The antigen expression construct may have a secretion leader which lead the expressed viral antigen secreted into culture medium for easier purification from cell culture medium.

Those expression ready lentivirus can produce high viral antigen in your desired mammalian cell type, to generate your cell-based detection assay. Furthermore, you can purify the expressed antigens for raising specific antibodies for vaccine and drug development. Please look into each product page below.