Development of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for detecting infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) infection based on the VP3 structural protein

Infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) causes a contagious immunosuppressive disease in chickens. The aim of the present study is to develop an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) using the expressed VP2 or VP3 protein of IBDV as the coating antigen for detecting antibodies to IBDV. Experimental results were compared with virus neutralization assay and a commercial-available ELISA. These assays were used to examine the sera from farm chickens and chickens vaccinated experimentally. The VP3-based ELISA had a higher correlation coefficient (R-2) of 0.812 with a commercial ELISA kit at a serum dilution of 1:500 than that of VP2-based ELISA (R-2) of 0.671. The relative sensitivity between virus neutralization and VP2-ELISA and VP3-ELISA was 96% (251/262) and 100% (262/262), respectively, and that between virus neutralization and a commercial ELISA was 99% (257/261). Additionally, compared with virus neutralization assay, the reference technique for diagnosing IBDV, VP3-based ELISA had an agreement value of 99%, superior to that of VP2-based ELISA (95%) or the commercial kit (89%). These results revealed that the capability of either VP2-ELISA or VP3-ELISA in detecting the field chicken sera was comparable to the commercial one, which is generally used to replace the virus neutralization assay. However, the preparation of VP3 is derived from an Escherichia coli expression system with a high yield and purification efficiency by Ni2+-NTA gels, which is more favorable to the insect cell-derived particles formed by VP2. Therefore, VP3-ELISA could be developed as an efficient and low cost diagnostic method for IBDV infection in field chickens. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.