AAV and adenovirus particle integrity analysis
Biologic materials such as viruses are delicate and all processing steps involve shear stresses to the product. For some virus types such as Adenovirus and AAV, broken particles may still appear circular and have the expected size but TEM provides unmatched information on the true status of the virus particles.
Gene therapy & virus based vaccines
MiniTEM can be used to automatically quantify disrupted empty AAV particles
TEM analysis of negatively stained AAV samples (nsTEM) is a reproducible method for revealing particles with disrupted capsid structure. Disrupted particles take in stain and can therefore be identified by their darker centres.
Comparing particle integrity of two AAV samples in MiniTEM:
Comparing particle integrity of Adenovirus samples in MiniTEM:
Below is an analysis of MuLV (murine leukemia virus). The numbers of circular intact particles with preserved morphology, of non-circular particles morphologically affected by the processing, and of debris, are compared.
Sample: Myoviridae Coliphage - Isolated by the Brouns lab, Kavli Institute - BN/TU Delft