Administration with Vaccinia Virus Encoding Canine Parvovirus 2 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) and then evaluated its immunogenicity in mice and dogs. The exogenous gene of CPV2, which replaced the major virulence gene hemagglutinin () of VV, expressed efficiently and stably . 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-) secreting T cell. In addition, administration with a high-dose of VV did not cause significant side effects for mice, thus indicating marked safety of this vaccine candidate. Most importantly, a single-dose vaccination of VV elicited substantial antibody responses and provided comparable protection for dogs with attenuated CPV2 vaccine. Collectively, this study demonstrated that VV could be used as a promising vaccine candidate preventing CPV2 from infection for dogs.