Multivalent recombinant MVA vaccine designed for dominant HIV form in China.

2003 MAY 21 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A multivalent recombinant modified Vaccinia Ankara vaccine has been designed for a circulating C/B recombinant form of HIV-1 that is dominant in Yunnan, China.

Z. Chen presented a poster describing the vaccine at the 10th conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections held in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2003. The work was done by researchers at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center under the guidance of David Ho, senior author on the presentation.

The researchers used modified single- and dual-promoter insertion vectors to place 5 HIV-1 genes (gag, pol, env, tat, and nef) into two separate regions of the MVA genome. "Recombinant MVA was selected by immunofluorescence staining and further plaque purified," they said.

"Several modifications were made to improve vaccine safety, including the elimination of potential negative effects of regulatory genes, and to enhance viral gene expression," Chen and colleagues noted.

"The vaccine is a single recombinant MVA (ADMVA) that expresses HIV-1 Env as well as fusion proteins Gag-Pol and Nef-Tat," they continued. "By Western blot analysis, all expected HIV-1 proteins were expressed in chicken embryo fibroblasts and various human cell lines."

The researchers particularly noted that in testing performed in BALB/c and B6xB10 mice, two intramuscular, sequential injections of 106 TCID[subscript]50 of ADMVA "elicited strong cell-mediated immune responses against all five viral proteins as determined by ELIspot ...