Live attenuated rubella viral vectors stably express HIV and SIV vaccine antigens while reaching high titers.

ABSTRACT: Live attenuated viruses make potent and effective vaccines. Despite the urgent need for an HIV vaccine, this approach has not been feasible, since it has not been possible to attenuate the virus reliably and guarantee vaccine safety. Instead, live viral vectors have been proposed that could present HIV vaccine antigens in the most immunogenic way, in the context of an active infection. We have adapted the rubella vaccine strain RA27/3 as a vector to express HIV and SIV antigens, and tested the effect of insert size and composition on vector stability and viral titer. We have identified an acceptor site in the rubella nonstructural gene region, where foreign genes can be expressed as a fusion protein with the nonstructural protein P150 without affecting essential viral functions. The insert

SUBMITTER: Virnik K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3423898 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature