Abstract
Porcine rubulavirus (PRV) is a contagious virus that affects the Mexican swine industry. This work aimed to evaluate the immunogenicity of an recombinant hemagglutinin neuraminidase-Porcine rubulavirus (rHN-PorPV) candidate vaccine on pregnant sows, and the protective efficacy afforded to their 7-day-old suckling piglets against PRV lethal challenge. Three sows were immunized with rHN-PorPV formulated with immune-stimulating complex (ISCOMs) and two sows with rHN-PorPV protein alone as well as a mock-immunized pregnant sow (negative control). Quantitative ELISA detected a high concentration of anti-rHN-PorPV Immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies in sow sera after the second dose of vaccine administered on day 14 until farrowing, showing viral-neutralizing and cross-neutralization activity against different variants of PRV. Sera samples from piglets of immunized sows (with or without adjuvant), showed high concentrations of IgG antibodies. As expected, piglets from the negative control sow (n=5), exhibited severe signs of disease and 100% of mortality after PRV challenge study. Conversely, 75% and 87.5% of the piglets born from the rHN-PorPV and the rHN-PorPV-ISCOMs-immunized sows (n=8), survived, respectively, showing milder PRV clinical signs. Our data indicate that rHN-PorPV candidate vaccine produced in Escherichia coli induces efficient humoral response in pregnant sows and that the maternally derived immunity provides high protection to suckling piglets against PRV lethal challenge.