Abstract
It is generally believed that a successful Zika virus (ZIKV) vaccine should induce neutralizing antibodies against the ZIKV envelope (E) protein to efficiently halt viral infection. However, E-specific neutralizing antibodies have been implicated in a phenomenon called antibody-dependent enhancement, which represents an ongoing concern in the flavivirus-vaccinology field. In this report, we investigated the vaccination potential of replication-deficient adenoviral vectors encoding the ZIKV non-structural proteins 1 and 2 (NS1/NS2) and employed the strategy of linking the antigens to the MHC-II associated invariant chain (li) to improve immunogenicity and by inference, the level of protection. We demonstrated that li-linkage enhanced the production of anti-NS1 antibodies and induced an accelerated and prolonged polyfunctional CD8 T cell response in mice, which ultimately resulted in a high degree of protection against ZIKV infection of the CNS.
Originalsprog | Engelsk |
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Artikelnummer | 2215 |
Tidsskrift | Viruses |
Vol/bind | 13 |
Udgave nummer | 11 |
ISSN | 1999-4915 |
DOI | |
Status | Udgivet - 2021 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:Funding: This work was supported by the Lundbeck Foundation. Experiments were performed while L.N. was the recipient of a PhD scholarship partly funded by the Lundbeck Foundation and partly by the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.