A novel hepatitis C virus vaccine approach using recombinant Bacillus Calmette-Guerin expressing mul

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Arch Virol. 2008 Apr 18 [Epub ahead of print]

A novel hepatitis C virus vaccine approach using recombinant Bacillus

Calmette-Guerin expressing multi-epitope antigen.

Wei SH, Yin W, An QX, Lei YF, Hu XB, Yang J, Lu X, Zhang H, Xu ZK.

The State Key Discipline and Department of Microbiology, Fourth Military Medical

University of PLA, 17 Changlexi Road, 710032, Xi’an, China.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major cause of liver disease worldwide. HCV

infection is associated with high morbidity and has become a major problem in

public health. Until now, there has been no effective prophylactic or

therapeutic vaccine. BCG, a live vaccine typically used for tuberculosis

prevention, has been increasingly utilized as a vector for the expression of

recombinant proteins that will induce specific humoral and cellular immune

responses. In this study, recombinant BCG (rBCG) was engineered to express a HCV

multi-epitope antigen CtEm, and HLA-A2.1 transgenic mice were immunized with

rBCG-CtEm. High levels of specific anti-HCV antibodies targeted to mimotopes of

HVR1 were detected in the serum. HCV-specific lymphocyte proliferation assay,

cytokine determination and cytotoxicity assay indicated that HCV

epotope-specific cellular immune responses were elicited in vitro. The rBCG-CtEm

immunization conferred protection against infection with the recombinant

vaccinia virus (rVV-HCV-CNS) in vivo. These results suggest that rBCG expressing

multi-epitope antigen may serve as an effective vaccine against HCV infection.

PMID: 18421415 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

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