Candidate Multi-Peptide-Vaccine Against Classical Swine Fever Virus Induces Strong Antibody Response with Predefined Specificity

IntroductionClassical swine fever virus(CSFV) is a pestiviruswhich causes significantmortality and morbidity inpigs.An epidemic of CSFV in a high pig densityarea can result in devastating financial losses,because few infected pigs can be effectively cured.In many countries in Europe and Asia,classicalswine fever (CSF) is controlled by vaccinationwith commercially available vaccine strains,suchas the Chinese vaccine strain(C-strain,i.e.,hogcholera lapinized virus) orsome modified-live vir…     

Preliminary Evaluation of a Candidate Multi-Epitope-Vaccine Against the Classical Swine Fever Virus

A multi-epitope-vaccine MEVABc consisting of two linear neutralizing determinants （BCI： aa693-716; A6： aa844-865） located on antigenic unit B/C and unit A of glycoprotein E2 was prepared to evaluate whether a combination strategy is effective in the design of peptide vaccines. After immunization, pig sera collected every one to two weeks were evaluated by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay. C-straininduced anti-sera and hyper-immune sera cannot recognize overlapping peptides that cover the E2 N-terminus, while MEVAgC is able to elicit high levels of peptide-specific antibody response. When compared with previously studied peptide vaccines PV-BC1 and PV-A6, the same dose of either component in the MEMABc increases the BC1- or A6-specific antibodies （to 1/3-1/2 of the levels of the separate vaccines）. However, the synergy between the antibodies may make MEVAgc much more potent. Moreover, anti-C-strain immunity pre-existing in pigs does not disturb the sequent MEVABc vaccination. Thus, MEVABc can be administrated to pigs which already possess anti-classical swine fever virus immunity. MEVAgC is a promising candidate marker vaccine.     

1970~2004年全球肠道病毒71型分离株的分子流行病学分析

人类肠道病毒71型（EV71）是引起手足口病的主要病原体，常导致严重的神经综合症。近年来病毒多爆发于亚太地区的热带区域。为了研究人类肠道病毒的进化历程以及遗传变异性，我们搜集了全球在1970年至2004年间分离的532株病毒的序列信息，这些信息包含了完整或接近完整的VP1片段序列(全为891个氨基酸)。经过两两序列比对以及遗传距离的分析，发现绝大多数病毒株属于先前分类的B或C型。同时，也观察到一种特殊的不属于任何分型的毒株R13223-IND-01，可能代表了一种新的病毒分型。在B型和C型病毒中，存在着一些区别于同型其他亚型的“孤儿株”，它们的出现在病毒进化分析中有重要的意义。此外，VP1片段上有6个位于离散位置的氨基酸存在共变异的现象，分析发现这种高比例的共变异与病毒亚型有着紧密的联系。