Recombinant DNA and Protein Vaccines for Foot-and-mouth Disease Induce Humoral and Cellular Immune Responses in Mice.
BACKGROUND
Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) is a small single-stranded RNA virus which belongs to the family Picornaviridae, genus Apthovirus. It is a principal cause of FMD which is highly contagious in livestock. In a wild type virus infection, infected animals usually elicit antibodies against structural and non-structural protein of FMDV. A structural protein, VP1, is involved in neutralization of virus particle, and has both B and T cell epitopes. A RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, 3D, is highly conserved among other serotypes and strongly immunogenic, therefore, we selected VP1 and 3D as vaccine targets.


METHODS
VP1 and 3D genes were codon-optimized to enhance protein expression level and cloned into mammalian expression vector. To produce recombinant protein, VP1 and 3D genes were also cloned into pET vector. The VP1 and 3D DNA or proteins were co-immunized into 5 weeks old BALB/C mice.


RESULTS
Antigen-specific serum antibody (Ab) responses were detected by Ab ELISA. Cellular immune response against VP1 and 3D was confirmed by ELISpot assay.


CONCLUSIONS
The results showed that all DNA- and protein-immunized groups induced cellular immune responses, suggesting that both DNA and recombinant protein vaccine administration efficiently induced Ag-specific humoral and cellular immune responses.
Department of Genetic Engineering, Faculty of Life Sciences and Technology, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 440-746, Korea.
Ji-Young
JY
Bae
Sun-Hwa
SH
Moon
Jung-Ah
JA
Choi
Jong-Sug
JS
Park
Bum-Soo
BS
Hahn
Ki-Yong
KY
Kim
Byunghan
B
Kim
Jae-Young
JY
Song
Dae-Hyuck
DH
Kwon
Suk-Chan
SC
Lee
Jong-Bum
JB
Kim
Joo-Sung
JS
Yang