This is exactly, well more or less that is, why I have hope for the RSV franchise ... specifically the alum results in the maternal MN assay.
They had a bunch of data supporting a successful P3 elderly, in some ways the data was redundant, so one looks at maternal and elderly for differences and looks to which data actually appears to best track outcome as measured by primary endpoints, and it appears to be MN. That the SPR numbers concurred with the MN numbers strengthens the argument.
And thanks for the correction on the soluble PS point, I erred in referring it to NP, but still hold that it is largely the same tech as the NP program, that is a recombinant protein antigen bacu driven in customized Sf9 cells ... as opposed to the whole budding , low-yield, membrane-constrained-epitope-selection, VLP program. It would be nice to know how much specific trade expertise is involved in the whole "self assembly" bit. I would imagine this can vary considerably from antigen to antigen, involves a fair bit of twiggling of detergents, salts, pH, [protein], and so on to get NPs vs goo. Or they just leave material enabling a hydrophobic stalk and it just falls together, but that seems a bit too fortuitous. It is just to easy too make scrambled eggs.