Development of a Synthetic Peptide ELISA Assay for the Detection of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Nonstructural Protein Antibodies

In order to develop an ELISA assay with synthetic peptides for the detection of antibody to the nonstructural proteins of foot-and-mouth disease virus, specific peptides were synthesized by a solid-phase method according to FMDV NSPs B-cell epitopes, and were conjugated to carrier protein BSA. An ELISA system was developed to detect FMDV NSPs antibody with the conjugated proteins as the coating antigen. The optimal coating concentration of the antigen was determined as 2.5 μg mL−1. The comparative study of this assay with UBI NSP ELISA kit and national commercial 3ABC ELISA kit in the detection of 199 serum samples showed that they were very coincident, and the identity rates were 96.48 and 97.48%, respectively. The development of ELISA using the synthetic peptides as coating antigen is specific, reproducible, stable, and easy, and can be used to differentiate FMDV infected pigs from immunized pigs.