Authors : Na Kong, Xinhua Wang, Jianwen Zhao, Jingdong Hu, Hong Zhang and Hongkun Zhao
Abstract: Infectious Bursal Disease (IBD) is a highly contagious viral disease of young chickens which is characterized by destruction of the lymphoid cells in the bursal of Fabricius; other lymphoid organs are also affected but to a lesser degree. Vaccination against the disease with inactivated or attenuated live vaccines is widely practiced but less effective due to the emergence of very virulent or antigenic variant strains of IBDV in recent years. VP2 is the major antigen of IBDV and contains major epitopes responsible for protection against IBDV. IL-18 can significantly promote T lymphproliferation response to enhance immunological effect of vaccine. In this study, a genetically engineered vaccine candidate, recombinant coexpression protein encoding the VP2 gene from the IBDV and the mature chicken interleukin-18 (mChIL-18) gene has been shown to have the ability to elicit both CD4+/CD8+T cell proliferations and neutralizing antibodies against IBD in chickens. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that recombinant coexpression protein VP2-IL18 (pVP2-IL18) can significantly protect against very virulent IBDV (vvIBDV) in chickens than recombinant protein VP2 (pVP2) and traditional vaccines. These results indicate that the recombinant protein simultaneouly expressing the VP2 protein of the IBDV and the mChIL-18 protein can be potentially used as a vaccine for protection of chickens from vvIBDV.
Na Kong, Xinhua Wang, Jianwen Zhao, Jingdong Hu, Hong Zhang and Hongkun Zhao, 2011. A Recombinant Baculovirus Expressing VP2 Protein of Infectious Bursal Disease Virus (IBDV) and Chicken Interleukin-18 (ChIL-18) Protein Protects Against Very Virulent IBDV. Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances, 10: 2706-2715.