Patent ID: 6991795

Claim:
A method of delivering a peptide or protein to a cell comprising: a) fusing a nucleic acid sequence encoding the peptide or protein to a modified human papillomavirus (HPV) L2 gene to create a fusion protein gene; b) expressing the fusion protein gene in a host cell to obtain fusion protein; c) contacting the fusion protein with HPV L1 protein under conditions wherein the fusion protein and the L1 protein spontaneously combine to form a virus like particle (VLP); and d) delivering the VLP to the cell; (i) wherein the modified HPV L2 gene encodes less than about 50% of wild type L2 protein and encodes domains from the amino and the carboxyl termini; and (ii) wherein the HPV L2 gene is from an HPV strain selected from the group consisting of: HPV6a, HPV6b, HPV11, HPV16, HPV18, HPV31, HPV33, HPV35, HPV42, HPV43, HPV44, HPV45, HPV51, HPV52, and HPV56.