Identification of one novel epitope targeting p54 protein of African swine fever virus using monoclonal antibody and development of a capable ELISA.

Abstract African swine fever (ASF) is one of the most lethal viral diseases affecting both domestic pigs and wild boars. The acute infection of the ASF disease in domestic pigs leads to a 100% mortality rate with symptoms including high fever, vascular changes, cyanosis of the skin. Until now, there are no commercial vaccines and antiviral drugs available for ASF control. Therefore, the spread of ASF poses great economic losses to the pig industry and the ecosystems in the affected countries. A rapid and capable method was urgently needed to monitor ASFV-specific antibodies for controlling the spread of ASFV. In this study, we obtained one strain of monoclonal antibody (mAb) against the p54 protein of ASFV, and the target epitope of the mAb was determined to be 175YTHKDLENSL184. The experimental results demonstrated that the monoclonal antibody could successfully recognize the exogenously expressed p54 protein and the chimeric virus constructed in our laboratory. The mAb could be used as a detection tool for the development of ASF vaccine strains. In addition, the ELISA established by using the obtained synthetic epitope peptide as the antigen had high sensitivity, good specificity and showed the great potential for ASF epidemic monitoring and control.