Chimeric epitope vaccine against Leptospira interrogans infection and induced specific immunity in guinea pigs. Academic Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • BACKGROUND: Leptospirosis is an important reemerging zoonosis, with more than half a million cases reported annually, and is caused by pathogenic Leptospira species. Development of a universal vaccine is one of the major strategic goals to overcome the disease burden of leptospirosis. In this study, a chimeric multi-epitope protein-based vaccine was designed and tested for its potency to induce a specific immune response and provide protection against L. interrogans infection. RESULTS: The protein, containing four repeats of six T- and B-cell combined epitopes from the leptospiral outer membrane proteins, OmpL1, LipL32 and LipL21, was expressed and purified. Western blot analysis showed that the recombinant protein (named r4R) mainly expressed in a soluble pattern, and reacted with antibodies raised in rabbit against heat-killed Leptospira and in guinea pigs against the r4R vaccine. Microscopic agglutination tests showed that r4R antisera was immunological cross-reactive with a range of Chinese standard reference strains of Leptospira belonging to different serogroups. In guinea pigs, the r4R vaccine induced a Th1-biased immune response, as reflected by the IgG2a/IgG1 ratio and cytokine production of stimulated splenocytes derived from immunized animals. Finally, r4R-immunized guinea pigs showed increased survival of lethal Leptospira challenges compared with PBS-immunized animals and tissue damage and leptospiral colonization of the kidney were reduced. CONCLUSIONS: The multi-epitope chimeric r4R protein is a promising antigen for the development of a universal cross-reactive vaccine against leptospirosis.

publication date

  • October 14, 2016

Research

keywords

  • Bacterial Outer Membrane Proteins
  • Bacterial Vaccines
  • Leptospira interrogans
  • Leptospirosis
  • Recombinant Fusion Proteins

Identity

PubMed Central ID

  • PMC5064800

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 84992422468

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1177/104063870201400105

PubMed ID

  • 27737644

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 16

issue

  • 1