Bacillus spore showcasing key antigens of African swine fever potentializes a promising oral vaccine candidate.

Abstract

African swine fever (ASF) remains a widespread and fatal infectious disease affecting both domestic pigs and wild boars around the world, and there is still no vaccine available for full protection. In recent years, Bacillus spores have been developed into effective vaccine carriers. Here, Bacillus amyloliquefaciens spores from strain CPLK1314 were used as a vaccine delivery system to display three highly antigenic proteins, p72, p30, and p54 of ASF, and their immune responses in BALB/c mice were evaluated. Our results demonstrated that the antibiotic-free Bacillus gene editing system constructed in this study can work effectively, and p72 and the fusion antigen p3054 were successfully expressed in the spore coat of CPLK1314 by fusing with CotB and CotG, respectively. Further animal experiments showed that the recombinant spores ΔBa72 and ΔBa3054 exhibited good immunogenicity, which induced high levels of antigen-specific serum IgG, proliferation of splenic lymphocytes, secretion of immune-related factors, as well as a significant increase in the proportion of T lymphocytes CD3⁺ CD4⁺ and CD3⁺ CD8⁺, and B lymphocytes B220⁺ CD19⁺. Interestingly, when providing the same number of spores, a 1:1 mixture of the two, ΔBa72 + 3054, could simultaneously trigger similar levels of both p72 and p30 antibodies without cross-affecting production levels. Therefore, based on the CRISPR-Cas9 continuous gene editing system constructed in this study, the simultaneous co-expression of one antigen species or synergistic expression of multiple antigens at different spatial positions of B. amyloliquefaciens spores might make it a promising candidate for an ASF oral vaccine. KEY POINTS: • Bacillus amyloliquefaciens spore is an ideal and effective vaccine delivery system • Bacillus spore showcasing key antigens of ASF is a promising oral vaccine candidate • The Bacillus vaccine can trigger effective protective responses in animals.