1. Vaccination with a DNA vaccine encoding Toxoplasma gondii ROP54 induces protective immunity against toxoplasmosis in mice.
- Author
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Yang, Wen-Bin, Zhou, Dong-Hui, Zou, Yang, Chen, Kai, Liu, Qing, Wang, Jin-Lei, Zhu, Xing-Quan, and Zhao, Guang-Hui
- Subjects
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DNA vaccines , *TOXOPLASMA gondii , *TOXOPLASMOSIS , *WARM-blooded animals , *IMMUNE response , *LABORATORY mice , *VACCINATION - Abstract
Toxoplasma gondii is an obligatory intracellular protozoan, which infects most of the warm-blooded animals, causing serious public health problems and enormous economic losses worldwide. The rhoptry effector protein 54 (ROP54) has been indicated as a virulence factor that promotes Toxoplasma infection by modulating GBP2 loading onto parasite-containing vacuoles, which can modulate some aspects of the host immune response. In order to evaluate the immuno-protective value of ROP54, we constructed a eukaryotic recombinant plasmid expressing T. gondii ROP54 and intramuscularly immunized Kunming mice with this recombinant plasmid against acute and chronic toxoplasmosis. All mice immunized with pVAX-ROP54 elicited a high level of specific antibody responses, a significant increase of lymphocyte proliferation, and a significant level of Th1-type cytokines (IFN-γ, IL-2 and IL-12p70), in addition to an increased production of Th2-type cytokines (IL-4 and IL-10). These results demonstrated that pVAX-ROP54 induced significant cellular and humoral (Th1/Th2) immune responses, which extended the survival time (13.0 ± 1.15 days for pVAX-ROP54 vs 6.7 ± 0.48 days for pVAX I, 6.8 ± 0.42 days for PBS and 6.5 ± 0.53 for blank control) and significantly reduced cyst burden (35.9% for pVAX-ROP54, 1% for pVAX I and 2% for PBS, compared with blank control) of immunized mice. These results indicate that the recombinant ROP54 plasmid can provide partial protection and might be a potential vaccine candidate against acute and chronic toxoplasmosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
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