Potency testing of veterinary rabies vaccines: replacement of challenge by in vitro testing: considerations for development of alternative assays.

Vaccination of domestic animals against rabies creates a critical barrier between wildlife reservoirs and the human population. Ensuring these vaccines are potent and effective is paramount in preventing human exposure to this deadly and costly disease. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) test is, at present, the most widely used and internationally recommended potency assay for batch testing inactivated rabies vaccines. This test has numerous inherent limitations and disadvantages, including a lack of precision. The NIH test requires a large number of animals and involves unrelieved pain and suffering. A relevant in vitro assay should provide a more accurate, reproducible, rapid, safe, and humane rabies vaccine potency test.

Isolation of Amatoxin-Resistant Lines of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii: Evidence for RNA Polymerase Mutants.

The inhibitory activities of amatoxins on the growth of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii have been determined using a convenient assay based upon incubation in multiwell tissue culture plates followed by turbidimetric estimates of growth on a multiwell plate reader. Values for the inhibitory dosage at which growth is 50% of untreated culture (ID(50)) of 5.4, 6.6, and 5.6 micromolar were obtained for alpha-amanitin, O-methyl-alpha-amanitin, and amaninamide, respectively. Treatment of liquid cultures with 1 microgram per milliliter N-methyl-N' -nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine followed by growth in agar pour tubes containing 25 micromolar alpha-amanitin led to the selection of several lines demonstrating varying resistance to amanitin inhibition, with ID(50) values from 36 micromolar to greater than 200 micromolar. Two lines completely resistant to inhibition by 200 micromolar alpha-amanitin provided partially purified RNA polymerase activities that were 160-fold and 5600-fold more resistant to inhibition than the analogous enzyme activity from the wild-type strain. These studies provide evidence that Chlamydomonas reinhardtii does not contain significant activity capable of inactivating alpha-amanitin and that this amatoxin may be used to select for RNA polymerase mutants.

Systemic and mucosal immune responses in mice orally immunized with avirulent Salmonella typhimurium expressing a cloned Porphyromonas gingivalis hemagglutinin.

Porphyromonas gingivalis produces a variety of virulence factors that may have a function in the periodontal disease process. Determination of the role of these various factors in pathogenesis and identification of a means for protecting the host from the destructive effects of this organism are areas of vigorous investigation. In this study we demonstrate the potential of avirulent Salmonella typhimurium strains to stimulate a specific systemic and mucosal immune response to a cloned P. gingivalis hemagglutinin (HagB). An avirulent strain of S. typhimurium, chi 4072, expressing the hagB gene of P. gingivalis 381 on the plasmid pDMD1 was intragastrically administered to BALB/c mice. These mice mounted a serum immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgA primary response against the hagB gene product and a mucosal immune response as measured by evaluation of saliva. IgA antibodies were also detected in bile. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using attenuated S. typhimurium strains as carriers of P. gingivalis virulence factors for subsequent evaluation of the systemic and mucosal immune response against these antigens. This system will provide a means for evaluating the virulence factors of P. gingivalis for their suitability in the construction of potential vaccines.

Spatial distribution and accumulation of low density lipoproteins in the abdominal aorta of swine: determination by a novel electrotransfer procedure.

An immunotransfer procedure has been developed which can determine both the spatial distribution of low density lipoproteins (LDL) along the intima-media of large blood vessels such as the aorta, and can quantify LDL accumulation along its length. Aortas which were opened longitudinally along their ventral aspect were positioned so that their intimal side abutted against a gel containing glyoxyl agarose to which anti-LDL had been covalently coupled. LDL was electrophoresed out of the agarose gel where it was immunofixed. This distribution was then visualized first by incubating the gel with 125I-anti-LDL which bound to free epitopes on the immunofixed LDL, and second by subjecting the washed and dried gel to autoradiography. Plasma LDL was applied to wells of different shapes and sizes in an agarose gel substituting for aortic tissue, and the transfer procedure was performed as described. The resultant patterns matched those of the original wells, suggesting that the spatial distribution of LDL in the autoradiogram probably mimicked that in the aortic tissue. The transfer procedure appeared to be specific for the antigen under study since minimal silver grains were observed in autoradiograms when an IgG fraction of nonimmune serum was used in place of anti-LDL. Application of increasing concentrations of LDL to wells in a gel substituting for tissue, resulted in a dose-dependent increase in autoradiographic grain density. If such standards were applied to gels adjacent to tissue samples, the amounts of LDL in the tissue could be quantified from the standard curve of grain density versus LDL concentration. The distribution of LDL along the abdominal aortas of 10- and 31-week-old swine was determined by converting autoradiographic grain densities to isopleths of LDL concentrations by computer assisted image analysis. These distributions were focal and were found to range between 10 and 225 ng of apoB/mm2 of intimal surface area. This procedure lends itself not only to studies relating lipoprotein accumulation to atherogenesis, but also to any studies dealing with tissue accumulation of macromolecules.

Isolation and characterization of a cloned Porphyromonas gingivalis hemagglutinin from an avirulent strain of Salmonella typhimurium.

Identification of surface macromolecules of Porphyromonas gingivalis that act as virulence factors in periodontal disease has important implications for studying host-parasite interactions as well as for potential vaccine development. The objective of this study was to determine whether a cloned, P. gingivalis hemagglutinin gene could be expressed in an intact form in an avirulent Salmonella typhimurium vaccine construct and to characterize the recombinant protein. The recombinant protein was purified from the vaccine strain, characterized, and tested for biological activity as a competitive inhibitor of hemagglutination. Cells of S. typhimurium SL3261/pST7 grown in Luria broth were broken by sonic disruption and fractionated. The purified recombinant protein was found to inhibit hemagglutination of erythrocytes by whole P. gingivalis cells. The same purified protein was analyzed for its N-terminal amino acid sequence and amino acid composition and found to match that predicted from the nucleotide sequence of the cloned gene. These results indicate that a surface macromolecule of P. gingivalis can be expressed in an intact and biologically active form in a Salmonella carrier strain.

Quantitation of apolipoprotein B in aortas of hypercholesterolemic swine.

An electroimmunoassay has been developed to quantify apolipoprotein B (apoB) in samples of aorta from normolipemic and hypercholesterolemic (diet-induced) swine. Acceptability of the assay was demonstrated using tests for specificity, sensitivity, accuracy, and validity. Specific sites in the grossly normal aortic arch of hypercholesterolemic animals were macroscopically demarcated after the injection of the dye, Evans blue. These blue sites, previously shown to be regions of early lesion formation, contained significantly greater amounts of apoB than adjacent nonblue (white) zones. By contrast, in normolipemic swine no difference in apoB content was found between blue and white regions of the arch. Likewise, the apoB content did not differ among various white regions of grossly normal aortas of hypercholesterolemic swine when no lesions were present. Also, once gross lesions were found in white regions, the apoB content was at least as great as in blue regions. The differences in apoB content between lesioned and nonlesioned areas were greatest in the abdominal aorta. The results of this study are consistent with an enhanced interstitial accumulation of lipoproteins containing apoB, especially low-density lipoprotein, occurring prior to lesion formation in this experimental model.

Cholesterol esterification in macrophages. Stimulation by lipoproteins containing apo B isolated from human aortas.

A lipoprotein fraction possessing many of the characteristics of plasma low density lipoproteins (P-LDL) was isolated from homogenates of lesioned human aortas by affinity chromatography. In contrast to P-LDL, this fraction, termed A-LP, was found to be more electronegative than P-LDL and to stimulate cholesterol esterification in mouse peritoneal macrophages (MPM). This stimulation tended toward saturation at approximately 100 micrograms/ml lipoprotein cholesterol. Cholesterol esterification was partially inhibited by fucoidin, a competitive inhibitor of the scavenger receptor on MPM. These results suggest that A-LP is recognized by a high affinity binding site on MPM. Stimulation of cholesterol esterification in MPM by A-lP was inhibited by the lysosomotropic agent, chloroquine, indicating that degradation in lysosomes was a prerequisite for cholesterol esterification. Substantial degradation of apo B within the intact A-LP was demonstrated by SDS-PAGE and immunoblotting. This degradation could be responsible for the increased negative charge on A-LP, and the enhanced recognition of A-LP by a receptor on MPM. Stimulation of cholesterol esterification increased linearly over a 48-hour time period, suggesting that the receptor on MPM recognizing A-LP was not down-regulated. This unabated increase in cholesterol esterification resulted in massive accumulation of intracellular cholesteryl esters and a gradual increase in oil red O-positive droplets, giving the MPM the characteristic morphology of foam cells. If these mechanisms demonstrated in vitro also occur in the intact artery, they could explain how foam cells are formed within the fatty streak lesion.

Inactivation of Pasteurella (Mannheimia) haemolytica leukotoxin causes partial attenuation of virulence in a calf challenge model.

The leukotoxin of Pasteurella (Mannheimia) haemolytica is believed to play a significant role in pathogenesis, causing cell lysis and apoptosis that lead to the lung pathology characteristic of bovine shipping fever. Using a system for Cre-lox recombination, a nonpolar mutation within the lktC transacylase gene of the leukotoxin operon was created. The lktC locus was insertionally inactivated using a loxP-aph3-loxP cassette, and then the aph3 marker was excised from the chromosome by Cre recombinase expressed from a P. haemolytica plasmid. The resulting lktC strain (SH2099) secretes inactive leukotoxin and carries no known antibiotic resistance genes. Strain SH2099 was tested for virulence in a calf challenge model. We inoculated 3 x 10(8) or 3 x 10(9) CFU of wild-type or mutant bacteria into the lungs of healthy, colostrum-deprived calves via transthoracic injection. Animals were observed for clinical signs and for nasal colonization for 4 days, after which they were euthanized and necropsied. The lower inoculum (3 x 10(8) CFU) caused significantly fewer deaths and allowed lung pathology to be scored and compared, while the 3 x 10(9) CFU dose of either the wild-type or mutant was lethal to >/=50% of the calves. The estimated 50% lethal dose of SH2099 was four times higher than that of the wild-type strain. Lung lesion scores were reduced twofold in animals inoculated with the mutant, while clinical scores were nearly equivalent for both strains. The wild-type and mutant strains were equally capable of colonizing the upper respiratory tracts of the calves. In this study, the P. haemolytica lktC mutant was shown to be less virulent than the parent strain.