Single dose of foot-and-mouth disease peptide vaccine fully protects swine and achieves intraserotype crossed neutralization

Abstract

Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) poses a persistent threat to the livestock sector, urging a need for safer and more effective vaccines. As traditional control approaches relying on inactivated virus vaccines face limitations, exploring subunit vaccine strategies such as those based on synthetic peptides represents an attractive alternative, compliant with DIVA vaccine requirements. We previously reported that dendrimer structures combining virus-specific B- and T-cell epitopes-referred to as B2T-conferred solid protection against type-O FMDV in swine. More recently, we designed a synthetic strategy with broad application prospects, assembling peptides into a modular dendrimer platform named B2T-TB2, a dimeric version of the preceding construct, harboring up to six immunologically relevant epitopes. In this study, we demonstrate that a single low dose of this multiepitopic vaccine induces in swine a fast and robust neutralizing response covering a broad antigenic spectrum and confers full protection, portraying B2T-TB2 as a promising FMDV emergency vaccine.