A highly pathogenic porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus candidate vaccine based on Japanese encephalitis virus replicon system

Pingsheng Hu; Xiaoming Chen; Lihong Huang; Shukai Liu; Fuyu Zang; Jinchao Xing; Youyue Zhang; Jiaqi Liang; Guihong Zhang; Ming Liao; Wenbao Qi

doi:10.7717/peerj.3514

A highly pathogenic porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus candidate vaccine based on Japanese encephalitis virus replicon system

PeerJ. 2017 Jul 20:5:e3514. doi: 10.7717/peerj.3514. eCollection 2017.

Authors

Pingsheng Hu^#¹, Xiaoming Chen^#¹, Lihong Huang¹, Shukai Liu¹, Fuyu Zang¹, Jinchao Xing¹, Youyue Zhang¹, Jiaqi Liang¹, Guihong Zhang¹, Ming Liao^{1

2

3}, Wenbao Qi^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ National and Regional Joint Engineering Laboratory for Medicament of Zoonoses Prevention and Control, College of Veterinary Medicine, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China.
² Key Laboratory of Zoonoses, Key Laboratory of Animal Vaccine Development, Ministry of Agriculture, Guangzhou, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Zoonoses Prevention and Control of Guangdong Province, Ministry of Agriculture, Guangzhou, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

In the swine industry, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is a highly contagious disease which causes heavy economic losses worldwide. Effective prevention and disease control is an important issue. In this study, we described the construction of a Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) DNA-based replicon with a cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter based on the genome of Japanese encephalitis live vaccine virus SA14-14-2, which is capable of offering a potentially novel way to develop and produce vaccines against a major pathogen of global health. This JEV DNA-based replicon contains a large deletion in the structural genes (C-prM-E). A PRRSV GP5/M was inserted into the deletion position of JEV DNA-based replicons to develop a chimeric replicon vaccine candidate for PRRSV. The results showed that BALB/c mice models with the replicon vaccines pJEV-REP-G-2A-M-IRES and pJEV-REP-G-2A-M stimulated antibody responses and induced a cellular immune response. Analysis of ELSA data showed that vaccination with the replicon vaccine expressing GP5/M induced a better antibodies response than traditional DNA vaccines. Therefore, the results suggested that this ectopic expression system based on JEV DNA-based replicons may represent a useful molecular platform for various biological applications, and the JEV DNA-based replicons expressing GP5/M can be further developed into a novel, safe vaccine candidate for PRRS.

Keywords: HP-PRRSV; JEV replicon; Vaccine.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31272563, 30800827), and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFD0500405). WQ and ML are supported by the “Special Support Plan of Guangdong Province in science and technology for talents”. There was no additional external funding received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.