ATTENUATED MENGO-VIRUS - A NEW VECTOR FOR LIVE RECOMBINANT VACCINES

Several features make Mengo virus an excellent candidate for use as a vaccine vector. The virus has a wide host range, including rodents, pi gs, monkeys, and most likely humans, and expresses its genome exclusiv ely in the cytoplasm of the infected cell. Stable attenuated strains e xist which are deleted for part of the 5' noncoding region of the geno me. Here we report an attenuated Mengo virus recombinant, vLCMG4, that encodes an immunodominant cytotoxic T-lymphocyte epitope of the lymph ocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) nucleoprotein. vLCMG4 induced pro tective immunity against lethal LCMV infection after a single, low-dos e immunization in BALB/c mice and elicited an LCMV-specific CD8(+) cyt otoxic T lymphocyte response. This demonstrates the potential of recom binant Mengo virus vaccines to confer protection against infectious di seases by the induction of cellular immune responses.