A promising multiple-epitope recombinant vaccine against classical swine fever virus

Classical swine fever (CSF) is a highly contagious and often fatal disease of swine. It is caused by classical swine fever virus (CSFV), one of the members of the genus Pestivirus of the Flaviviridae family. The development of a safe and effective vaccine against the CSF is critical to pandemic control, this article shows a tandem-repeat multiple-epitope recombinant vaccine can protect pigs from CSFV challenge. That was composed as following: two copies each of glycoprotein E2 residues 693–707, 241–276 and 770–781, and two copies amino acid residues 1446–1460 of the non-structural protein NS2-3. In the challenge test, all of the swine vaccinated with Chinese vaccine strain (C-strain) were fully protected from a challenge with CSFV. However, after three successive vaccinations with the multiple-epitope recombinant vaccine, three out of five pigs were protected from challenge with CSFV (in terms of both clinical signs and viremia). These results demonstrate that multiple-epitope recombinant vaccine which carrying the major CSFV epitopes can induce a high level of epitope-specific antibodies and exhibit a protective capability that parallels induced by C-strain to a certain extent.