Innate immune escape and adaptive immune evasion of African swine fever virus: A review

Sai Niu; Yilin Guo; Xueying Wang; Zixuan Wang; Limeng Sun; Hanchuan Dai; Guiqing Peng

doi:10.1016/j.virol.2023.109878

Innate immune escape and adaptive immune evasion of African swine fever virus: A review

Virology. 2023 Oct:587:109878. doi: 10.1016/j.virol.2023.109878. Epub 2023 Sep 7.

Authors

Sai Niu¹, Yilin Guo¹, Xueying Wang¹, Zixuan Wang¹, Limeng Sun¹, Hanchuan Dai², Guiqing Peng³

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, Key Laboratory of Prevention & Control for African Swine Fever and Other Major Pig Diseases, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, College of Veterinary Medicine, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430070, China.
² College of Veterinary Medicine, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430070, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, Key Laboratory of Prevention & Control for African Swine Fever and Other Major Pig Diseases, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, College of Veterinary Medicine, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430070, China. Electronic address: penggq@mail.hzau.edu.cn.

PMID: 37708611
DOI: 10.1016/j.virol.2023.109878

Abstract

African swine fever virus (ASFV) causes hemorrhagic fever in domestic and wild pigs. The continued spread of the virus in Africa, Europe and Asia threatens the global pig industry. The lack of an effective vaccine limits disease control. ASFV has evolved a variety of encoded immune escape proteins and can evade host adaptive immunity, inducing cellular inflammation, autophagy, or apoptosis in host cells. Frequent persistent infections hinder the development of a viral vaccine and impose technical barriers. Currently, knowledge of the virulence-related genes, main pathogenic genes and immunoregulatory mechanism of ASFV is not comprehensive. We explain that ASFV invades the host to regulate its inflammatory response, interferon production, antigen presentation and cellular immunity. Furthermore, we propose potential ideas for ASFV vaccine target design, such as knocking out high-virulence genes in ASFV and performing data mining to identify the main genes that induce antiviral responses. To support a rational strategy for vaccine development, a better understanding of how ASFV interacts with the host and regulates the host's response to infection is needed. We review the current knowledge about ASFV targeting of host innate and adaptive immunity and the mechanisms by which the affected immune pathways are suppressed.

Keywords: ASFV; Adaptive immune; Escape; Inhibition; Innate immune.