Dengue Fever Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Dengue Fever, including details on symptoms, risk factors, diagnosis, treatment, prevention.

A chimeric tetravalent dengue DNA vaccine elicits neutralizing antibody to all four virus serotypes in rhesus macaques.

Raviprakash K, Apt D, Brinkman A, Skinner C, Yang S, Dawes G, Ewing D, Wu SJ, Bass S, Punnonen J, Porter K

Viral Diseases Department, Naval Medical Research Center, 503 Robert Grant Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA. raviparakashk@nmrc.navy.mil

DNA shuffling and screening technologies were used to produce chimeric DNA constructs expressing antigens that shared epitopes from all four dengue serotypes. Three shuffled constructs (sA, sB and sC) were evaluated in the rhesus macaque model. Constructs sA and sC expressed pre-membrane and envelope genes, whereas construct sB expressed only the ectodomain of envelope protein. Five of six, and four of six animals vaccinated with sA and sC, respectively, developed antibodies that neutralized all 4 dengue serotypes in vitro. Four of six animals vaccinated with construct sB developed neutralizing antibodies against 3 serotypes (den-1, -2 and -3). When challenged with live dengue-1 or dengue-2 virus, partial protection against dengue-1 was observed. These results demonstrate the utility of DNA shuffling as an attractive tool to create tetravalent chimeric dengue DNA vaccine constructs, as well as a need to find ways to improve the immune responses elicited by DNA vaccines in general.

Published 1 September 2006 in Virology, 353(1): 166-73.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Dengue Fever Research Today. All Rights Reserved.