Rabies has potential use in vaccines for other infectious diseases.

2004 JUL 7 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Scientists at Jefferson Medical College have literally "fused" a part of a rabies virus protein to another foreign protein, resulting in a more robust immune response in animals than with the protein alone.

Though it's early in the research, the researchers, in demonstrating that it's possible to make a foreign protein more "immunogenic," have opened the door to creating more powerful vaccines against a number of infectious agents, such as anthrax.

Matthias J. Schnell, PhD, associate professor and acting chair of biochemistry and molecular pharmacology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and his colleagues - including internationally renowned virologist Hilary Koprowski, MD, professor of microbiology and immunology at Jefferson Medical College and director of the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories and the Center for Neurovirology at Jefferson Medical College, and Bernhard Dietzschold, DVM, professor of microbiology and immunology at Jefferson Medical College - reported their results June 14, 2004, in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to Schnell, who is also associate director of the Center for Human Virology and Biodefense at Jefferson Medical College, a protein inside the rabies virus called a nucleoprotein is wrapped around the virus genetic material, forming a "viral ribonucleoprotein complex" (RNP). The researchers knew that the nucleoprotein was able to arouse a strong immune response, causing an infected host to send out waves of antibodies and other immune system cells. They wanted to see if they could use this effect to enhance the response to a foreign protein.

They created a new rabies virus that included the gene ...