NS1: different approaches to immune recognition and Flavivirus diagnosis

LORCH MS; DE GANZÓ AF; ROTA PR; COLLADO MS

Córdoba

Congreso; LII Reunión Anual de Investigación en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular; 2016

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Bioquímica y Biología Molecular

The actual methodology of Flavivirus diagnosis is centered almost exclusively in the detection of early antigens or the determination of the immune response (IgM or IgG) in patients sera. However, different virus with similar antigenicity, such as the SaintLouis Encephalitis virus (SLEV) and the West Nile virus (WNV), are not quite distinguishable using these techniques. In cases were the immune methods give positive results, a different and more specific technique needs to be performed to confirm the viral agent. Regarding to this situation, a new and easy flaviviral diagnosis method needs to be established.The main aim of this workis to develop the tools capable of identify different flaviviral infections tobe used in serological assays. To do this, we chose the NS1 protein of SLEV and WNV and generated two recombinant NS1 versions, one using the whole sequence and another one using only the more antigenic regions (epitopes). Alternatively, we fused the entire sequence of NS1SLEV to a system based on theZ protein of Junín virus. The use of this system allowed us to express enveloped virus like particles (VLPs) with NS1SLEV attached to its plasma membrane as a surface antigen. These VLPs will be used to inoculate mice and evaluate the humoral response anti NS1SLEV. Finally, the mice sera and the different NS1antigens will be analyzed in several enzymoimmunassays (EIAs)