Immunogenicity of replication-deficient vesicular stomatitis virus based
rabies vaccine in mice
Abstract
Rabies is a viral disease that causes severe neurological manifestations
both in humans and mammals. Although inactivated and/or attenuated
vaccines have been developed and widely used around the world, there are
still concerns with regard to their safety, efficacy, and costs. As
demand has grown for a new rabies vaccine, we have developed a new
vesicular stomatitis viruses (VSVs) based rabies vaccine that replaces
glycoproteins with rabies virus (RABV) glycoprotein (GP), or so-called
VSV/RABV-GP. The generation of VSV/RABV-GP was evaluated with
GP-specific antibodies and reduced transduction with GP-specific
neutralizing antibodies. Mice immunized with VSV/RABV-GP produced higher
levels of both IgM and IgG antibodies compared to inactivated RABV. The
secretion profiles of IgG1 and IgG2a production suggested that
VSV/RAVB-GP induces the T helper cell type-2 immune bias. In addition,
VSV/RAVB-GP immunization produced a neutralizing antibody of 103.37
IU/mL. Our results confirm that VSV/RABV-GP could be a new potential
vaccination platform for RABV.