Immunization With a Live-Attenuated RH:Δ NPT1 Strain of Toxoplasma gondii Induces Strong Protective Immunity Against Toxoplasmosis in Mice

Wen-Bin Yang; Jin-Lei Wang; Qian Gui; Yang Zou; Kai Chen; Qing Liu; Qin-Li Liang; Xing-Quan Zhu; Dong-Hui Zhou

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2019.01875

Immunization With a Live-Attenuated RH:Δ NPT1 Strain of Toxoplasma gondii Induces Strong Protective Immunity Against Toxoplasmosis in Mice

Front Microbiol. 2019 Aug 13:10:1875. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2019.01875. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Wen-Bin Yang^{1

2

3}, Jin-Lei Wang², Qian Gui³, Yang Zou², Kai Chen², Qing Liu⁴, Qin-Li Liang², Xing-Quan Zhu^{2

5}, Dong-Hui Zhou¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Fujian-Taiwan Animal Pathogen Biology, College of Animal Sciences, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Veterinary Etiological Biology, Key Laboratory of Veterinary Parasitology of Gansu Province, Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lanzhou, China.
³ Department of Microbiology and Microbial Engineering, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
⁴ College of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taigu, China.
⁵ Jiangsu Co-innovation Center for the Prevention and Control of Important Animal Infectious Diseases and Zoonoses, College of Veterinary Medicine, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China.

Abstract

Toxoplasmosis, one of the most important health-threatening diseases worldwide, is caused by Toxoplasma gondii, which infects a wide range of warm-blooded animals and humans, leading to enormous health and socioeconomic concerns. T. gondii can establish chronic infection to evade the immune response in hosts. Once a chronic infection has been established, the available treatments cannot efficiently control this stage of T. gondii efficiently. Moreover, the available treatments rely only on a few drugs, such as sulfapyridine and pyrimethamine, that tend to have severe side effects. Given these factors, vaccination has been considered to be the most efficient method to prevent and control this disease. However, there is currently lack of effective vaccine available for use to prevent toxoplasmosis apart form Toxovax^®, the only available vaccine, which is used in sheep to prevent abortion. To address this problem, we knocked out the NPT1 gene of the type I T. gondii strain using the CRISPR-Cas9 system, constructed a live-attenuated vaccine and evaluated its protective efficacy in a mouse model. Immunization of mice with RH:ΔNPT1 induced a high level of Toxoplasma-specific IgG1, IgG2a and total IgG 42 days after immunization. There was a significant increase in the levels of cytokines in the splenocyte suspensions of RH:ΔNPT1-infected mice, and a mixed Th1/Th2 response was induced in the mice. Remarkably, after heterologous challenges with tachyzoites of the RH, PYS and Pru strains and cysts of the Pru strain by different infection routes, the immunized animals were protected from toxoplasmosis with a 100% survival rate, in both acute and chronic infection. In addition, compared with control mice, the Pru cyst load was clearly reduced in the brains of RH:ΔNPT1-infected immunization-mice. Our study demonstrated that the RH:ΔNPT1 strain was able to evoke strong anti-Toxoplasma immune responses and provide effective protection against parasite strains with different levels of virulence, suggesting that the RH:ΔNPT1 strain may represent a promising live-attenuated vaccine against toxoplasmosis, which is worthy of further evaluation in food-producing animals and in definitive feline host.

Keywords: RH:ΔNPT1; Toxoplasma gondii; immunization; live-attenuated vaccine; mice.