Oral administration of myostatin-specific whole recombinant yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae vaccine increases body weight and muscle composition in mice

Myostatin negatively regulates skeletal muscle growth. It was found that active immunization with myostatin-specific vaccine blocked myostatin function in vivo, which resulted in increase of body weight and muscle composition in mice. However, traditional vaccine and its administration method are expensive and laborious. In this study, we investigated the possibility of using heat-killed whole recombinant yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae vaccine to modulate myostatin function in mice. The CDS of myostatin was obtained from a pig genome by PCR and subcloned into a yeast expression vector, which was driven by a copper-inducible promoter. Expression of recombinant myostatin was induced by CuSO(4) and confirmed by western blot. We vaccinated mice by oral feeding and subcutaneous injection as comparison. We found that oral feeding resulted in the similar effective immune response than injection, which was measured by the presence of myostatin-specific antibodies in mouse serum. Interestingly, animals vaccinated by both methods demonstrated enhanced growth performance compared to control. All animals were healthy looking throughout the course of experiment, suggesting that whole recombinant yeast vaccine is nontoxic and therefore safe to use. Given the simplicity of its nature, heat-killed myostatin-specific whole recombinant yeast vaccine holds a promise to treat human muscle-wasting diseases in the future. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.