Enveloped virus-like particle platforms: vaccines of the future?

The techniques to produce effective vaccines have evolved, and the early vaccines (live, inactivated, subunit...) are no longer considered as the most appropriate for new vaccine development. We question here what will be the future vaccines, and argue that virus-like particle (VLP)-based vaccines are promising candidates. In addition to being effective vaccines against analogous viruses from which they are derived, VLPs can also be used to present foreign epitopes to the immune system. The achievement of this strategy can be illustrated by the recent development of malaria candidate vaccine. We point out recent VLP-based vaccine developments and discuss future perspectives.