A self-adjuvanted nanoparticle based vaccine against infectious bronchitis virus

Jianping Li; Zeinab H Helal; Christopher P Karch; Neha Mishra; Theodore Girshick; Antonio Garmendia; Peter Burkhard; Mazhar I Khan

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0203771

A self-adjuvanted nanoparticle based vaccine against infectious bronchitis virus

PLoS One. 2018 Sep 14;13(9):e0203771. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0203771. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Jianping Li¹, Zeinab H Helal^{1

2}, Christopher P Karch³, Neha Mishra¹, Theodore Girshick⁴, Antonio Garmendia¹, Peter Burkhard^{3

5

6}, Mazhar I Khan¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pathobiology and Veterinary Science University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States of America.
² Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt.
³ The Institute of Material Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States of America.
⁴ Charles River Laboratories, Avian vaccine services, North Franklin, CT, United States of America.
⁵ Department of Molecular Cell Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States of America.
⁶ Alpha-O-Peptides AG, Riehen, Switzerland.

Abstract

Infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) affects poultry respiratory, renal and reproductive systems. Currently the efficacy of available live attenuated or killed vaccines against IBV has been challenged. We designed a novel IBV vaccine alternative using a highly innovative platform called Self-Assembling Protein Nanoparticle (SAPN). In this vaccine, B cell epitopes derived from the second heptad repeat (HR2) region of IBV spike proteins were repetitively presented in its native trimeric conformation. In addition, flagellin was co-displayed in the SAPN to achieve a self-adjuvanted effect. Three groups of chickens were immunized at four weeks of age with the vaccine prototype, IBV-Flagellin-SAPN, a negative-control construct Flagellin-SAPN or a buffer control. The immunized chickens were challenged with 5x10(4.7) EID50 IBV M41 strain. High antibody responses were detected in chickens immunized with IBV-Flagellin-SAPN. In ex vivo proliferation tests, peripheral mononuclear cells (PBMCs) derived from IBV-Flagellin-SAPN immunized chickens had a significantly higher stimulation index than that of PBMCs from chickens receiving Flagellin-SAPN. Chickens immunized with IBV-Flagellin-SAPN had a significant reduction of tracheal virus shedding and lesser tracheal lesion scores than did negative control chickens. The data demonstrated that the IBV-Flagellin-SAPN holds promise as a vaccine for IBV.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

Animals
Chickens
Coronavirus Infections / immunology
Coronavirus Infections / veterinary*
Infectious bronchitis virus / immunology*
Nanoparticles*
Poultry Diseases / immunology
Poultry Diseases / prevention & control*
Viral Vaccines / chemistry
Viral Vaccines / therapeutic use*

Substances

Viral Vaccines

Grants and funding

NIFA-USDA provided support for authors PB and MK and The Charles River Laboratories, Avian vaccine services, provided support in the form of salaries for authors (T.G), but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these author are articulated in the „author contributions‟ section.