Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) virus causes severe and persistent disease in pigs worldwide. Its heterogeneity poses a major challenge for the effective prevention and control of PRRS. Purified viruses are essential for serological studies. Traditional methods for purifying PRRS virus are time- and labor-intensive and difficult to scale-up and requires long processing time. Here, we describe a rapid, simple, scalable process for PRRS virus purification. Highly pure viral particles were obtained after ultrafiltration and liquid chromatography, as confirmed by SDS-PAGE and electron microscopy. The overall process achieved a recovery of 50% of raw virus, with a purity close to that obtained by CsCl coupled with sucrose density gradients. The purification process described here should be useful in large-scale production of highly pure PRRS virus.
Keywords: Chromatography; Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus; Purification.
Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.