| Human papillomavirus of type 11 (HPV11), infecting mainly human mucosa and causing proliferative lesions, is a nonenveloped DNA virus characterized by an icosahedral capsid with a diameter of about 55 nm. The capsid is composed of the major late protein L1 and minor late protein L2. Viral genome is a double-stranded, circular, and covalently closed DNA molecule of 7931 base pairs (bp). The viral genome can be divided into three parts: (1) a noncoding region, the long control region (LCR) or upstream regulatory region, responsible for regulation of replication and transcription of the virus; (2) the early (E) region, including 7 open reading frames (ORFs), encoding proteins involved in cell transformation (E6,E7,E5), or in the replication and transcription of viral genome (E1,E2); and (3) the late (L) region, which encodes the major L1 and minor L2 capsid proteins.HPV11/6 are representatives of the low-risk HPVs and mainly cause condyloma acuminatum. Condyloma acuminatum (genital warts), a kind of sexually transmitted diseases, is very popular worldwide and severely damages to the human beings. Obviously, it is significantly important to explore the HPV11/6 vaccines that could be effective means of protecting the infections or curing the genital warts and associated diseases. Given the impossibility of propagating papillomavirus in vivo or in vitro culture systems, the availability of virus particles for vaccination studies is limited. This problem has been overcome by the production of the viral capsid proteins L1 and L2 in bacteria, yeast, insect or mammalian cells with genetic engineering techniques.Previous data have demonstrated that L1 proteins expressed with genetic engineering techniques are sufficient enough to assemble into virus-like particles (VLPs) in eukaryotic cells. VLPs are structurally and antigenically similar to their virion counterparts, and present conformational epitopes which are important for virus...
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