A Recombinant Influenza A/H1N1 Carrying A Short Immunogenic Peptide of MERS-CoV as Bivalent Vaccine in BALB/c Mice

Shehata, Mahmoud M.; Kandeil, Ahmed; Mostafa, Ahmed; Mahmoud, Sara H.; Gomaa, Mokhtar R.; El-Shesheny, Rabeh; Webby, Richard; Kayali, Ghazi; A. Ali, Mohamed

The novel chimeric bivalent 5 + 3 vaccinated mice showed that a significant increase of nAbs against MERS-CoV occurs at week 8. Mice vaccinated with the chimeric bivalent virus were protected from mortality and body weight loss at 2 weeks of challenge with wild type H1N1pdm09 virus. At week 4, an apparent decline in antibody levels of specific immune response was observed. This is likely related to a traditional phenomenon, namely self-limitation or resolution, in which the neutralizing antibodies titer is decreased following the booster immunization as a response to the administrated antigens [24, 25] . Several studies showed that the protective efficacy of MERS-CoV vaccines positively correlates with the evoked neutralizing antibody titers in the serum of vaccinated animals [26, 27] . These results are in accordance with the results of other viral platforms chimeric viruses carrying spike protein which provided nAbs against MERS-CoV [9, 28] .