Expression of MIP-1α (CCL3) by a Recombinant Rabies Virus Enhances Its Immunogenicity by Inducin.pdf

JOURNAL OF VIROLOGY, Sept. 2010, p. 9642–9648 Vol. 84, No. 18 0022-538X/10/$12.00 doi:10.1128/JVI.00326-10 Copyright © 2010, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved. Expression of MIP-1 (CCL3) by a Recombinant Rabies Virus Enhances Its Immunogenicity by Inducing Innate Immunity and Recruiting Dendritic Cells and B Cells 1 1 1,2 1 1 Ling Zhao, § Harufusa Toriumi, †§ Hualei Wang, § Yi Kuang, Xiaofeng Guo, ‡ Kinjiro Morimoto,3 and Zhen F. Fu1,4* Departments of Pathology 1 and Infectious Diseases,4 University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602; College of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin 130062, China 2; and Yasuda Women’s University, Hiroshima 731-0153, Japan3 Received 11 February 2010/Accepted 24 June 2010 Previously, we showed that overexpression of MIP-1 in mouse brain further decreased rabies virus (RABV) pathogenicity (L. Zhao, H. Toriumi, Y. Kuang, H. Chen, and Z. F. Fu, J. Virol., 83:11808–11818, 2009). In the present study, the immunogenicity of recombinant RABV expressing MIP-1 (rHEP-MIP1) was determined. It was found that intramuscular immunization of BALB/c mice with rHEP-MIP1 resulted in a higher level of expression of MIP-1 at the site of inoculation, increased recruitment of dendritic cells (DCs) and mature B cells into the draining lymph nodes and the peripheral blood, and higher virus-neutralizing antibody titers than immunization with the parent rH