A DNA Prime and MVA Boost Strategy Provides a Robust Immunity against Infectious Bronchitis Virus in Chickens.

Infectious bronchitis (IB) is an acute respiratory disease of chickens caused by the avian coronavirus Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV). Modified Live Virus (MLV) vaccines used commercially can revert to virulence in the field, recombine with circulating serotypes, and cause tissue damage in vaccinated birds. Previously, we showed that a mucosal adjuvant system, QuilA-loaded Chitosan (QAC) nanoparticles encapsulating plasmid vaccine encoding for IBV nucleocapsid (N), is protective against IBV. Herein, we report a heterologous vaccination strategy against IBV, where QAC-encapsulated plasmid immunization is followed by Modified Vaccinia Ankara (MVA) immunization, both expressing the same IBV-N antigen. This strategy led to the initiation of robust T-cell responses. Birds immunized with the heterologous vaccine strategy had reduced clinical severity and >two-fold reduction in viral burden in lachrymal fluid and tracheal swabs post-challenge compared to priming and boosting with the MVA-vectored vaccine alone. The outcomes of this study indicate that the heterologous vaccine platform is more immunogenic and protective than a homologous MVA prime/boost vaccination strategy.

Effective mosaic-based nanovaccines against avian influenza in poultry.

Avian influenza virus (AIV) is an extraordinarily diverse pathogen that causes significant morbidity in domesticated poultry populations and threatens human life with looming pandemic potential. Controlling avian influenza in susceptible populations requires highly effective, economical and broadly reactive vaccines. Several AIV vaccines have proven insufficient despite their wide use, and better technologies are needed to improve their immunogenicity and broaden effectiveness. Previously, we developed a "mosaic" H5 subtype hemagglutinin (HA) AIV vaccine and demonstrated its broad protection against diverse highly pathogenic H5N1 and seasonal H1N1 virus strains in mouse and non-human primate models. There is a significant interest in developing effective and safe vaccines against AIV that cannot contribute to the emergence of new strains of the virus once circulating in poultry. Here, we report on the development of an H5 mosaic (H5M) vaccine antigen formulated with polyanhydride nanoparticles (PAN) that provide sustained release of encapsulated antigens. H5M vaccine constructs were immunogenic whether delivered by the modified virus Ankara (MVA) strain or encapsulated within PAN. Both humoral and cellular immune responses were generated in both specific-pathogen free (SPF) and commercial chicks. Importantly, chicks vaccinated by H5M constructs were protected in terms of viral shedding from divergent challenge with a low pathogenicity avian influenza (LPAI) strain at 8 weeks post-vaccination. In addition, protective levels of humoral immunity were generated against highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) of the similar H5N1 and genetically dissimilar H5N2 viruses. Overall, the developed platform technologies (MVA vector and PAN encapsulation) were safe and provided high levels of sustained protection against AIV in chickens. Such approaches could be used to design more efficacious vaccines against other important poultry infections.