Protection of chickens, with or without maternal antibodies, against IBDV infection by a recombinant IBDV-VP2 protein

The use of avian herpesviruses (Marek's disease virus, MDV) as vectors to express the capsid protein of infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) was well established, and its protection against IBDV challenge has been evaluated previously. However, there is little data about rMDV1 expressing the VP2 protein of IBDV protecting SPF and commercial chickens against virulent IBDV (vIBDV) challenge. In this study, we constructed a stable rMDV1 expressing the VP2 protein of IBDV by inserting the coding sequence within the US10 gene of MDVl by homologous recombination and designated this as rMDVl-US10L, and evaluated effectiveness of the recombinant VP2 protein with SPF chickens and commercial chickens with maternal antibodies in vIBDV challenge. The results can be summarized as follows: (1) We constructed a rMDV1 expressing IBDV-VP2 under the control of the MDV1 glycoprotein B (gB) promoter [rMDV1-US10L]. (2) rMDV-VP2 protein was readily expressed and induced 53% protection against a vIBDV challenge in SPF chickens with 103 PFU/chicken, whereas 104 PFU induced 73% protection. (3) Vaccination of commercial chickens having maternal antibodies to rMDV1-VP2 induced 87% protection in vIBDV challenge, which was similar to results using the live vaccine, BJ87 IBDV strain, in commercial chickens. These results demonstrate that the VP2 antigen expressed in the MDV vector was an effective and stable vaccine in correlation with the vaccine efficacy against lethal IBDV challenge, and can provide a better protective effect that is likely to persist for the life of the chickens.