Drug – bio-affecting and body treating compositions – Antigen – epitope – or other immunospecific immunoeffector – Virus or component thereof
Patent
1998-02-19
2000-07-18
Strucker, Jeffrey
Drug, bio-affecting and body treating compositions
Antigen, epitope, or other immunospecific immunoeffector
Virus or component thereof
4242071, 4241841, 4241861, 4241931, 42419611, 530326, A61K 3912, A61K 3921, A61K 3938, A61K 39385
Patent
active
060903902
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to recombinant DNA and polypeptides encoded thereby, having use in provision of antibodies, vaccines, diagnostic test kits and methods of diagnosis and treatment or prophylaxis for equine arteritis virus (EAV) and equine arteritis virus mediated disease.
Equine viral arteritis, a disease for which equids are the only reported hosts, has been known for some 40 years and manifests itself with widely varying clinical signs. In its most severe form EAV infection causes abortion and foal death which makes it a potentially significant commercial threat to, inter alia, the horse breeding industry. Early veterinary articles refer to it as epizootic cellulitis, pinkeye or equine influenza. Disease outbreaks are identified infrequently and field isolates of the single stranded RNA virus itself are rare.
EAV is transmitted by the respiratory and venereal routes, with a 30-60% carrier state existing in seropositive stallions which persistently shed virus in their semen. Thus the venereal route is a particular cause for concern, as these shedding stallions may infect broodmares at mating. In the light of the potential economic importance of the virus and its stud carrier mediated infection capability there exists a requirement for prophylactic treatment and reliable diagnosis of equine viral arteritis, and rapid identification of equids previously exposed to the infectious agent. Laboratory tests based on ELISA using whole virus as antigen, virus neutralisation (VN) and complement fixation (CF) formats have been developed (see Chirnside (1992) Br Vet J 148, pp 181). The known ELISA is relatively sensitive when applied to tissues, eg sera, from horses previously vaccinated for other diseases such as influenza and herpesvirus, while the VN and CF formats have limited temporal sensitivity; the VN test is unable to distinguish between vaccination and natural infection.
Vaccination procedures have concentrated on safety and efficacy of whole inactivated virus and attenuated live virus vaccines. The live vaccine can induce short term shedding of virus from the nasopharynx and does not prevent this causing infection of commonly housed animals which have not been so treated. It is not yet known if formalinised vaccines or other inactivated vaccine preparations provide reliable protection.
Attempts to provide improvements to both diagnostic tests and vaccines have included studies into panels of antibodies raised against various EAV proteins. A 29K envelope protein (G.sub.L) has been identified as antigenic (Balasuriya et al, (1993) J Gen Virol 74, 2525-2529; Deregt et al, (1994) J Gen Virol 75, 2439-2444) and peptides derived from this protein induce a virus neutralising response in horses (Chirnside et al, (1995) J Gen Virol in press). A previous invention (UK Patent Application No GB 9400656.4) provided isolated peptides of G.sub.L that produce a potent neutralising immune response against EAV when administered to animals, particularly horses, and these peptides provided sensitive detection of EAV antibodies when used as binding agents in biding assays formats. Further provided was DNA encoding for these peptides.
In the first aspect of the present invention there is provided a method for testing for the presence of antibodies to equine arteritis virus comprising use of a peptide or peptide conjugate of the viral nucleocapsid (N) protein as a specific binding agent. Such test is preferably of ELISA format but may use the peptide or conjugate as immobilised binding agent or labelled secondary binding agent in a so-called sandwich assay. Preferred peptides or peptide conjugates of the invention comprise epitopes present in the amino acid sequence corresponding to amino acids 1 to 110 (SEQ ID No.2) of EAV N, more preferably amino acids 1 to 69 of EAV N (SEQ ID No.3) and, additionally, amino acids 1 to 28 (SEQ ID No.4), or a sequence having at least 90% homology to these sequences. These peptides are antigenic and may be used to provide isolated antibodies produced by an immunological response when
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Animal Health Trust
Nelson Brett
Strucker Jeffrey
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