An Intracellular Epitope of ASFV CD2v Protein Elicits Humoral and Cellular Immune Responses

作者：Wenlong Lu, Yilin Bai, Shuai Zhang, Xuyang Zhao, Jiaxin Jin, Xiaojing Zhu, Rui Wang, Yanan Wu, Angke Zhang, Gaiping Zhang, Guoqing Zhuang, Aijun Sun · 发表于：Animals · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.3390/ani13121967 · 被引用次数：17 · 研究领域：Animal Disease Management and Epidemiology、Vector-Borne Animal Diseases、Viral Infectious Diseases and Gene Expression in Insects

The African swine fever virus (ASFV) causes high mortality in domestic pigs. ASFV encodes an important protein target for subunit vaccine development, CD2v, but its most effective immunological regions are not known. Herein, we generated a monoclonal antibody (mAb) named IF3 by immunizing mice against the intracellular region of the CD2v protein (CD2v-IR). 1F3 specifically recognized CD2v, which is expressed transiently in transfected Sf9 cells and also in inactivated ASFV-infected porcine alveolar macrophage (PAM) cells. The epitope recognized by 1F3 is 264EPSPREP270, which is highly conserved in ASFV genotypes. Immunization of mice with this epitope elicited an increased IgG response, including IgG1 and IgG2a subtypes, and also increased CD8+ T cells and cytokine expression. Overall, these results indicate that this epitope induces both humoral and cellular immune responses that may be used for ASFV-related subunit vaccine design and development.