Immune response to live-attenuated Japanese encephalitis vaccine (JE-CV) neutralizes Japanese encephalitis virus isolates from South-East Asia and India

Abstract

Background During clinical development of the licensed Japanese encephalitis chimeric virus vaccine (JE-CV), the neutralization capacity of vaccine-induced antibodies was assessed against the vaccine virus and against well characterized wild-type (wt) viruses isolated between 1949–1991. We assessed whether JE-CV-induced antibodies can also neutralize more recent wt Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) isolates including a genotype 1 isolate. Methods Sera from 12–18 month-old children who received a single dose of JE-CV in a phase III study in Thailand and the Philippines (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00735644) were randomly selected and pooled according to neutralization titer against JE-CV into eight samples. Neutralization was assessed by plaque reduction neutralization tests (PRNT50) against three recent isolates from JEV genotypes 1 and 3 in addition to four JEV previously tested. Results Neutralization titers against the three recent JEV strains were comparable to those observed previously against other strains and the vaccine virus. The observed differences between responses to genotype 1 and 3 viruses were within assay variability for the PRNT50. Conclusions The results were consistent with previously generated data on the neutralization of wt JEV isolates, immune responses induced by JE-CV neutralize recently isolated virus from southeast (SE) Asia and India.