Immunogenicity and efficacy of immunodeficiency virus-like particles pseudotyped with the G protein of vesicular stomatitis virus.

Vaccination with exogenous antigens such as recombinant viral proteins, immunodeficiency virus-derived whole inactivated virus particles, or virus-like particles (VLP) has generally failed to provide sufficient protection in animal models for AIDS. Pseudotyping VLPs with the vesicular stomatitis virus G protein (VSV-G), which is known to mediate entry into dendritic cells, might allow more efficient stimulation of immune responses. Therefore, we pseudotyped noninfectious immunodeficiency virus-like particles with VSV-G and carried out a preliminary screen of their immunogenicity and vaccination efficacy.

Vaccine protection from CD4+ T-cell loss caused by simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) mac251 is afforded by sequential immunization with three unrelated vaccine vectors encoding multiple SIV antigens.

Candidate human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) vaccine strategies that induce strong cellular immune responses protect rhesus macaques that are infected with recombinant simian/human immunodeficiency virus SHIV89.6p from acute CD4+ T-cell loss and delay progression to AIDS. However, similar strategies have not proven as efficacious in the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)mac model of AIDS, an infection that causes a slow, steady loss of CD4+ T-cell function and numbers in rhesus macaques similar to that caused by HIV-1, the principal cause of AIDS in humans.

Prion diseases: infectious and lethal doses following oral challenge.

A brain homogenate prepared from a terminally ill hamster infected with scrapie strain 263K was serially diluted and administered orally to groups of hamsters. The undiluted brain homogenate led to clinical scrapie in all animals inoculated. The attack rate decreased with dilutions of the homogenate, and subclinical infections were identified among the healthy survivors at 520 days post-infection by Western blotting.