S. Duenas-carrera et al., A truncated variant of the hepatitis C virus core induces a slow but potent immune response in mice following DNA immunization, VACCINE, 19(7-8), 2000, pp. 992-997
Vaccination of BALB/c mice with pIDKCo, a plasmid containing the coding seq
uence for the first 176 amino acids of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) core pro
tein, induced both humoral and cellular specific immune responses. Particul
arly, the level of anti-core antibodies increased slowly with time up to a
mean value above 1:8000 that was generally superior than that found in anti
-HCV positive individuals. Six out of nine anti-HCV positive human sera wer
e able to inhibit at different extent the binding of mouse anti-core sera t
o a recombinant capsid protein. Our results show that it is possible to eli
cit a potent humoral and cellular immune response against the HCV core anti
gen in mice following DNA immunization. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All
rights reserved.