Transfer of Anti-Rotavirus Antibodies during Pregnancy and in Milk Following Maternal Vaccination with a Herpes Simplex Virus Type-1 Amplicon Vector

Meier, Anita F.; Suter, Mark; Schraner, Elisabeth M.; Humbel, Bruno M.; Tobler, Kurt; Ackermann, Mathias; Laimbacher, Andrea S.

It has been reported that RV can become systemic leaving the intestinal route and emerging into the blood [24, 25] . As the strain EDIM cannot be propagated in vitro [26] , the viral load in the sera of pups was analyzed using a RV specific quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). The first set of experiments showed promising results indicating that pups from vaccinated dams had lowest DD50 (DD50/mL) titers whereas pups swapped had 20-50 times higher DD50/mL values that reflected the antibody titer (Table A10) . Subsequent experiments indicated variables due to the age of the pups at the time of challenge and thus possible developmental stage of immune maturation, weight of the pups and limitation of sera collection due to the need to kill the experimental animals (Table A11 ). We concluded that it was ethically questionable to control all these variables by selecting a multitude of animals in order to further standardize immunization including controls, birth date, size of the litter and body weight of the pups for the various swap experiments.