Evaluation of Vaccine Strains Developed for Efficient, Broad-Range Protection against Foot-and-Mouth Disease Type O

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) type O includes 11 genetic topotypes. The Southeast Asia (SEA), Middle East–South Asia (ME-SA), and Cathay topotypes belong to FMD type O and occur frequently in Asia. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a potent vaccine strain with a broad antigenic coverage in order to provide complete protection against these three topotypes. In this study, an experimental vaccine was produced using chimeric vaccine strains (JC-VP1 or PA2-VP1) that contained VP4, VP2, and VP3 of the ME-SA topotype (O Manisa) and VP1 of the SEA topotype (Mya98 lineage; O/SKR/Jincheon/2014) or ME-SA topotype (PanAsia2 lineage; O/PAK/44). Mice were immunized with the experimental vaccines, and they were fully protected against the three topotypes. The neutralizing antibody titers of PA2-VP1 were significantly higher than those of JC-VP1 in the early vaccination phase in pigs. Here, we confirmed complete protection in pigs vaccinated with JC-VP1 or PA2-VP1, when challenged against the SEA (O/SKR/Jincheon/2014), ME-SA (O/SKR/Boeun/2017) and Cathay (O/Taiwan/97) topotype viruses, with moderately higher protection provided by PA2-VP1 than by JC-VP1.