Oncotarget

Research Papers:

Immunization with recombinant rabies virus expressing Interleukin-18 exhibits enhanced immunogenicity and protection in mice

Weiwei Gai, Wenwen Zheng, Chong Wang, Gary Wong, Yanyan Song and Xuexing Zheng _

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Oncotarget. 2017; 8:91505-91515. https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.21065

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Abstract

Weiwei Gai1,2,*, Wenwen Zheng1,*, Chong Wang3,*, Gary Wong4, Yanyan Song1 and Xuexing Zheng2

1College of Veterinary Medicine, Jilin University, Changchun, China

2School of Public Health, Shandong University, Jinan, China

3State Key Laboratory of Veterinary Biotechnology, Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Harbin, China

4CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

*These authors have contributed equally to this work

Correspondence to:

Xuexing Zheng, email: [email protected]

Keywords: rabies virus, IL-18, immune responses, vaccine, antibody titer

Received: March 03, 2017     Accepted: July 18, 2017     Published: September 16, 2017

ABSTRACT

Several studies have shown that interleukin-18 (IL-18) plays an important role in both innate and adaptive immune responses. In this study, we investigated the pathogenicity and immunogenicity of recombinant rabies virus expressing IL-18 (rHEP-IL18). Experimental results showed that Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) mice that received a single intramuscular immunization with rHEP-IL18 elicited the highest titers of serum neutralizing antibodies and the strongest cell-mediated immune responses to prevent the development of rabies disease, compared with immunization with the parent virus HEP-Flury. Mice inoculated with rHEP-IL18 developed significantly higher IFN-γ responses, increased percentages of CD4+ and CD8+ T-lymphocytes compared to HEP-Flury. Flow cytometry results show that rHEP-IL18 recruited more activated T- and B-cells in lymph nodes or peripheral blood, which is beneficial for virus clearance in the early stages of infection. A higher percentage of mice immunized with rHEP-IL18 survived wild-type rabies virus (RABV) challenge, compared to HEP-Flury mice. Our results show that rHEP-IL18 is promising as a novel vaccine for RABV prevention and control.


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