It does not contain mercury, thiomersal or live virus or dead virus, only virus-like particles, which cannot reproduce in the human body.

There have been reports that the shot is more painful than other common vaccines, and the manufacturer Merck partly attributes this to the virus-like particles within the vaccine.

Plant virus particles or virus-like particles (VLPs) have applications in both biotechnology and nanotechnology.

The protein, also called a virus-like particle, is the vaccine.

Since virus-like particles have a characteristic electrophoretic behavior, this provides a simple means of assessing a mutant for acquisition of native protein structure.

The vaccine contains a virus-like particle but not the actual virus.

But, he cautioned, "these are virus-like particles; they are not a virus."

In some cases, virus-like particles can be formed from capsid proteins.

Because of their highly repetitive, multivalent structure, virus-like particles are typically more immunogenic than subunit vaccines (described below).

A three-dimensional, atomic-resolution structure of the capsid protein in the context of a virus-like particle has been described.