Efficacy of a Novel Multiepitope Vaccine Candidate against Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Serotype O and A

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious and economically devastating disease in cloven-hoofed animals. To prevent the spread of FMD virus (FMDV), traditional inactivated vaccines are used to immunize susceptible animals in disease-endemic countries. However, the inactivated FMD vaccine has several limitations, including safety concerns. To overcome these limitations, subunit proteins have been studied as alternative vaccine candidates. In this study, we designed two multiepitope recombinant proteins (OVM and AVM) containing antigenic sites (residue of VP1 132-162 and residue of VP1 192-212) of three topotypes of FMDV serotype O or three topotypes of FMDV serotype A. Each recombinant protein was efficiently expressed in Escherichia coli with high solubility, and the immunogenicity and protective efficacy of the proteins as FMD vaccine candidates were evaluated. The results showed that OVM and AVM emulsified with ISA201 adjuvant induced effective antigen-specific humoral and cell-mediated immune responses and successfully protected mice from O/Jincheon/SKR/2014, O/VET/2013, and A/Malaysia/97 viruses. In addition, intramuscular immunization of pigs with the OVM and AVM emulsified with ISA201 elicited effective levels of neutralizing antibodies to the viruses with homologous epitopes. Importantly, OVM-AVM emulsified with CAvant^®SOE-X adjuvant conferred 100% protection against the O/Jincheon/SKR/2014 virus with homologous residues and 75% protection against A/SKR/GP/2018 with heterologous residues. The results presented in this study suggest that the combination of OVM and AVM protein with an effective adjuvant could yield an effective and safe vaccine candidate for the prevention and control of foot-and-mouth disease. In addition, our results provide a vaccine platform that can safely, cost-efficiently, and rapidly generate protective vaccine candidates against diverse FMDVs.