DNA vaccines elicit durable protective immunity against individual or simultaneous infections with Lassa and Ebola viruses in guinea pigs.

ABSTRACT: We previously developed optimized DNA vaccines against both Lassa fever and Ebola hemorrhagic fever viruses and demonstrated that they were protective individually in guinea pig and nonhuman primate models. In this study, we vaccinated groups of strain 13 guinea pigs two times, four weeks apart with 50 µg of each DNA vaccine or a mock vaccine at discrete sites by intradermal electroporation. Five weeks following the second vaccinations, guinea pigs were exposed to lethal doses of Lassa virus, Ebola virus, or a combination of both viruses simultaneously. None of the vaccinated guinea pigs, regardless of challenge virus and including the coinfected group, displayed weight loss, fever or other disease signs, and all survived to the study endpoint. All of the mock-vaccinated guinea pigs that w

SUBMITTER: Cashman KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5718824 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature