📄 A chimeric multi-epitope DNA vaccine elicited specific antibody response against severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus which attenuated the virulence of SARS-CoV in vitro

Epitope-based vaccines designed to induce antibody responses specific for severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) are being developed as a means for increasing vaccine potency. In this study, we identified four B cell epitopes from the spike (S) and membrane (M) protein through bioinformatics analysis and constructed a multi-epitope DNA vaccine. Intramuscular immunization of mice with this vaccine was sufficient to induce specific prime as well as a long-term memory humoral immune response to at least two candidate epitopes, S437-459 and M1-20. A DNA prime-protein boost strategy greatly enhanced the antibody generation and the immune sera not only reacted with the lysates of SARS-CoV-infected Vero cells but also neutralized the cytopathic effect of SARS by 75% at 1:160 dilution. The novel immunogenic S protein peptide revealed in this study provides new target for SARS vaccine design; and our work indicated multi-epitope DNA vaccine as an effective means for eliciting polyvalent humoral immune response against SARS-CoV.

keywords 🔗 severe acute (1373) 🔗 cytopathic effect (91) 🔗 respiratory syndrome-associated (90) 🔗 immune response (314) 🔗 antibody responses (58) 🔗 respiratory syndrome (2004) 🔗 acute respiratory (1734) 🔗 syndrome-associated coronavirus (88)

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