About the Authors

Milena Lange

Contributed equally to this work with: Milena Lange, Melanie Fiedler

Affiliation Institute of Virology, University Hospital Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

Melanie Fiedler

Contributed equally to this work with: Milena Lange, Melanie Fiedler

Affiliation Institute of Virology, University Hospital Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

Dorothea Bankwitz

Affiliation Division of Experimental Virology, TWINCORE, Hannover, Germany

William Osburn

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Sergei Viazov

Affiliation Institute of Virology, University Hospital Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

Olena Brovko

Affiliation Institute of Virology, University Hospital Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

Abdel-Rahman Zekri

Affiliation Virology and Immunology Unit, National Cancer Institute, Cairo, Egypt

Yury Khudyakov

Affiliation Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

Michael Nassal

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine II, University Hospital Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

Paul Pumpens

Affiliation Department of Recombinant biotechnology, Latvian Biomedical Research and Study Centre, Riga, Latvia

Thomas Pietschmann

Affiliation Division of Experimental Virology, TWINCORE, Hannover, Germany

Jörg Timm

Affiliation Institute of Virology, University Hospital Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

Michael Roggendorf

Affiliation Institute of Virology, University Hospital Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

Andreas Walker

Andreas.Walker@uni-due.de

Affiliation Institute of Virology, University Hospital Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

Competing Interests

The authors have read the journal's policy and have the following conflicts. Authors MN and AW are inventors of a patent application for the SplitCore system [Ref: WO/2008/028535] entitled “Split-core-particles for the presentation of foreign molecules, especially for vaccine applications, and method for their production” [Ref: EP 2059525 B1 and WO/2008/028535]. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: MF SV ARZ YK MN PP TP JT MR AW. Performed the experiments: ML MF DB WO OB YK AW. Analyzed the data: ML MF DB WO SV ARZ YK TP JT MR AW. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MN PP ARZ. Wrote the paper: MF MN JT MR AW.