Recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus-based dengue-2 vaccine candidate induces humoral response and protects mice against lethal infection.

ABSTRACTDengue is the most important arbovirus disease throughout the world and it is responsible for more than 500,000 dengue hemorrhagic cases and 22,000 deaths every year. One vaccine was recently licensed for human use in Brazil, Mexico and Philippines and although at least seven candidates have been in clinical trials the results of the most developed CYD vaccine have demonstrated immunization problems, such as uneven protection and interference between serotypes. We constructed a vaccine candidate based on vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) expression of pre-membrane (prM) and envelope (E) proteins of dengue-2 virus (DENV-2) and tested it in mice to evaluate immunogenicity and protection against DENV-2 infection. VSV has been successfully used as vaccine vectors for several viruses to induce strong humoral and cellular immune responses. The VSV-DENV-2 recombinant was constructed by inserting the DENV-2 structural proteins into a VSV plasmid DNA for recombinant VSV-DENV-2 recovery. Infectious recombina...