Deletion Mutants of the Attenuated Recombinant ASF Virus, BA71ΔCD2, Show Decreased Vaccine Efficacy
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Author
Lopez, Elisabeth
Bosch-Camós, Laia
Ramirez-Medina, Elizabeth
Vuono, Elizabeth
Navas, Maria Jesus
Muñoz, Marta
Zhang, Jinya
Alonso, Uxia
Salas, Maria Luisa
Anachkov, Nikolay
Gladue, Douglas P.
Borca, Manuel V.
Publication date
2021-08-25ISSN
1999-4915
Abstract
African swine fever (ASF) has become the major threat to the global swine industry. Lack
of available commercial vaccines complicates the implementation of global control strategies. So
far, only live attenuated ASF viruses (ASFV) have demonstrated solid protection efficacy at the
experimental level. The implementation of molecular techniques has allowed the generation of a
collection of deletion mutants lacking ASFV-specific virulence factors, some of them with promising
potential as vaccine candidates against the pandemic genotype II ASFV strain currently circulating in
Africa, Europe, Asia and Oceania. Despite promising results, there is room for improvement, mainly
from the biosafety point of view. Aiming to improve the safety of BA71∆CD2, a cross-protective
recombinant live attenuated virus (LAV) lacking the ASFV CD2v gene (encoding β-glucuronidase as a
reporter gene) available in our laboratory, three new recombinants were generated using BA71∆CD2
as a template: the single mutant BA71∆CD2f, this time containing the fluorescent mCherry reporter
gene instead of CD2v, and two double recombinants lacking CD2v and either the lectin gene (EP153R)
or the uridine kinase (UK) gene (DP96R). Comparative in vivo experiments using BA71∆CD2f,
BA71∆CD2DP96R and BA71∆CD2EP153R recombinant viruses as immunogens, demonstrated that
deletion of either DP96R or EP153R from BA71∆CD2f decreases vaccine efficacy and does not
improve safety. Our results additionally confirm ASFV challenge as the only available method today
to evaluate the protective efficacy of any experimental vaccine. We believe that understanding the
fine equilibrium between attenuation and inducing protection in vivo deserves further study and
might contribute to more rational vaccine designs in the future.
Document Type
Article
Document version
Published version
Language
English
Subject (CDU)
619 - Veterinary science
Pages
13
Publisher
MDPI
Is part of
Viruses
Citation
Lopez, Elisabeth, Laia Bosch-Camós, Elizabeth Ramirez-Medina, Elizabeth Vuono, Maria Jesus Navas, Marta Muñoz, and Francesc Accensi et al. 2021. "Deletion Mutants Of The Attenuated Recombinant ASF Virus, BA71ΔCD2, Show Decreased Vaccine Efficacy". Viruses 13 (9): 1678. doi:10.3390/v13091678.
Grant agreement number
MINECO/Programa Estatal de I+D+I orientada a los retos de la sociedad/AGL2016-78160-C2-1-R/ES/Estrategias de protección frente a la peste porcina africana: de la investigación básica a la aplicada/
Program
Sanitat Animal
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- ARTICLES CIENTÍFICS [2811]
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