Low-cost production of dengue virus E-domainIII for an immunoassay development.

MARIA EMILIA SMITH; ALEXANDRA TARGOVNIK; JULIETA CEREZO; MIRANDA MARÍA VICTORIA; RODRIGUEZ TALOU

Panamá city

Congreso; 5th Pan-American Dengue Research Network Meeting Panama; 2016

Dengue is a viral disease transmitted to human by Aedes mosquitoes. The incidence of dengue has grown dramatically in the last years and around 390 million infections occur each year. Currently, most of the available serological immunoassays use the whole virus as a source of antigens, what implies high costs, potential biohazard and a high cross reactivity with others flavivirus. Thus, the aim of this work was to express a recombinant antigen of dengue virus in Rachiplusia nu larvae for the development of a specific immunoassay for dengue diagnosis. The recombinant antigen consists on the domain III of the envelope protein of dengue virus type-2 fused to hydrophobin (rDomIIIHFB) for its purification by an aqueous two-phase system (ATPS) and for its immobilization in immunoassay plates. We developed a low-cost expression and purification platform for the production of a dengue virus antigen. The rDomIIIHFB-based immunoassay shows specificity for dengue virus type-2 IgG.