Protective Immunity Against Homologous and Heterologous Influenza Virus Lethal Challenge by Immunization with New Recombinant Chimeric HA2-M2e Fusion Protein in BALB/C Mice.

Influenza is an acute and highly contagious respiratory disease. The error prone RNA polymerase and segmented nature of the influenza A virus genome allow antigenic drift and shift, respectively. Therefore, most influenza vaccines are inefficient along time and against different viral subtypes. In this study, for the first time, protection properties of a new recombinant fusion of HA2 and M2e peptides originated from influenza virus A/Brisbane/59/2007-like (H1N1) in BALB/c mice model were investigated. After immunization of the BALB/c mice, the protection property of fusion peptide was determined by a neutralizing assay test. For further study, mice were lethal challenged by the (mouse adapted, A/PR8/34 [H1N1]) and heterologous (mouse adapted, A/Brisbane/10/2007 [H3N2]) influenza virus subtypes. Then, the lung viral titers, body weight, and survival rate of the immunized mice were monitored. The results showed that immunization by the M2e-HA2 recombinant fusion peptide provides strong protection against homologous challenge and an infirm protection against heterologous. These protections against homologous and heterologous influenza A virus challenges meant the universal nature of these recombinant peptides in an immunity manner against influenza A virus. However, more studies are needed to optimize this recombinant construction, and this experiment recommends HA2-M2e fusion peptide as a universal influenza A vaccine candidate.

Generation of New M2e-HA2 Fusion Chimeric Peptide to Development of a Recombinant Fusion Protein Vaccine.

PURPOSE: The purpose was to design a new construction containing influenza virus (H1N1) M2e gene and HA2 gene by bioinformatics approach, cloning the construct in to Escherichia coli and produce M2e-HA2 peptide. METHODS: The procedure was done by virus cultivation in SPF eggs, hemagglutination assay (HA), RNA isolation, RT-PCR, primers designed (DNAMAN 4 and Oligo7), virtual fusion construction translation (ExPASy), N-Glycosylated sites prediction (Ensemblegly-Iowa), complete open reading frame (ORF), stop codon studied (NCBI ORF Finder), rare codon determination (GenScript), Solvent accessibility of epitopes (Swiss-PdbViewer), antigenic sites prediction (Protean), fusion PCR of M2e-HA2 gene, sequence analysis, nested PCR, gel electrophoresis, double digestion of pET22b(+) plasmid and the fusion construct, ligation of them, transformation of the ligated vector (pET22b-M2e-HA2) to E.coli (BL21), mass culture the cloned bacterium ,induction the expression by isopropyl-beta-D-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG), sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), purification the fusion peptide by Ni-NTA column, western blot to verify the purification. RESULTS: In this study we developed a new approach for fusion of Influenza virus M2e (96 nucleotides) and HA2 (663 nucleotides) genes based on fusion PCR strategy and produced a fused fragment with 793 nucleotides. The construct was successfully cloned and expressed. CONCLUSION: This construct is a 261 amino acid chimeric fusion peptide with about 30 KD molecular weight. According on the latest information; this is the first case of expression and purification M2e-HA2 fusion chimeric peptide, which could be used for development of a recombinant M2e-HA2 fusion protein vaccine.

Optimization of incubation temperature in embryonated chicken eggs inoculated with H9N2 vaccinal subtype of avian influenza virus.

There are little information about growth properties of low pathogenic (LP) avian influenza virus (AIV) in embryonated chicken eggs (ECEs) at different incubation temperatures. Knowledge of this information increases the quantity and quality of antigen in vaccine production process. For this purpose, 10(-5) dilution of AIV (A/Chicken/Iran/99/H9N2) was inoculated (Intra-allantoic) into 400, 11-day old specific pathogen free (SPF) ECEs in the 0.1 mL per ECE rate and incubated in 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37.5, 38, 39 ˚C for 72 hr in 65% humidity. Early death embryos in first 24 hr were removed. Amnio-allantoic fluid was withdrawn into the measuring cylinder, and tested for hemagglutination (HA) activity and egg infective dose 50 (EID50). The utilizable ECEs and amnio-allantoic fluid volume was significantly increased in 35 ˚C, (p < 0.05). Significant difference in HA and EID50 titers, were seen only in 39 ˚C group. Therefore, 35°C is an optimum temperature for incubation of inoculated ECEs.