Administration with Vaccinia Virus Encoding Canine Parvovirus 2 vp2 Elicits Systemic Immune Responses in Mice and Dogs

Canine parvovirus type 2 (CPV2) is a highly contagious cause of serious and often fatal disease in young dogs. Despite the widespread availability of attenuated vaccines, safer, more stable, and more effective CPV2 vaccine candidates are still under exploration. Vaccinia virus (VV) has already been proved to be a safe, stable, and effective vaccine vector. In this study, we generated a VV-based CPV2 vaccine candidate (VV-CPV-VP2) and then evaluated its immunogenicity in mice and dogs. The exogenous vp2 gene of CPV2, which replaced the major virulence gene hemagglutinin (ha) of VV, expressed efficiently and stably in vitro. Subsequently, intramuscular immunization of mice induced robust and lasting systemic immune responses, including neutralizing antibody against both CPV2a and CPV2b, and CPV2-VP2-specific interferon gamma (IFN-gamma) secreting T cell. In addition, administration with a high-dose of VV-CPV-VP2 did not cause significant side effects for mice, thus indicating marked safety of this vaccine candidate. Most importantly, a single-dose vaccination of VV-CPV2-VP2 elicited substantial antibody responses and provided comparable protection for dogs with attenuated CPV2 vaccine. Collectively, this study demonstrated that VV-CPV2-VP2 could be used as a promising vaccine candidate preventing CPV2 from infection for dogs.