Evaluation of the use of non-pathogenic porcine circovirus type 1 as a vaccine delivery virus vector to express antigenic epitopes of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus

• Four chimeric PCV1 viruses expressing known antigenic epitopes of PRRSV were constructed and rescued.
• The chimeric viruses were stable and infectious in vitro and three chimeric viruses were infectious in pigs.
• The PCV1-VR2385EPI chimeric viruses elicited neutralizing antibodies against PRRSV VR2385 strain.
• The non-pathogenic PCV1 potentially may serve as a vaccine delivery vector.

We previously demonstrated that the C-terminus of the capsid gene of porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) is an immune reactive epitope displayed on the surface of virions. Insertion of foreign epitope tags in the C-terminus produced infectious virions that elicited humoral immune responses against both PCV2 capsid and the inserted epitope tags, whereas mutation in the N terminus impaired viral replication. Since the non-pathogenic porcine circovirus type 1 (PCV1) shares similar genomic organization and significant sequence identity with pathogenic PCV2, in this study we evaluated whether PCV1 can serve as a vaccine delivery virus vector. Four different antigenic determinants of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) were inserted in the C-terminus of the PCV1 capsid gene, the infectivity and immunogenicity of the resulting viruses are determined. We showed that an insertion of 12 (PRRSV-GP2 epitope II, PRRSV-GP3 epitope I, and PRRSV-GP5 epitope I), and 14 (PRRSV-GP5 epitope IV) amino acid residues did not affect PCV1 replication. We successfully rescued and characterized four chimeric PCV1 viruses expressing PRRSV linear antigenic determinants (GP2 epitope II: aa 40–51, ASPSHVGWWSFA; GP3 epitope I: aa 61–72, QAAAEAYEPGRS; GP5 epitope I: aa 35–46, SSSNLQLIYNLT; and GP5 epitope IV: aa 187–200, TPVTRVSAEQWGRP). We demonstrated that all chimeric viruses were stable and infectious in vitro and three chimeric viruses were infectious in vivo. An immunogenicity study in pigs revealed that PCV1-VR2385EPI chimeric viruses elicited neutralizing antibodies against PRRSV-VR2385. The results have important implications for further evaluating PCV1 as a potential vaccine delivery vector.