Immunogenicity of a scalable inactivated rotavirus vaccine in mice

A inactivated rotavirus vaccine is a safe and effective potential vaccine for the prevention of rotavirus infection among children, but no approved licensed vaccine is available now. In this study, a scalable inactivated rotavirus vaccine, prepared in Vero cells cultured by microcarrier fermentation, inactivated by formalin and absorbed by Al(OH)(3) adjuvant, was used to vaccinate six-week-old female Balb/c mice by intramuscular injection. After two immunizations at an interval of three weeks, both humoral and cell-mediated immune responses were assessed by ELISA, microneutralization assay and EISPOT assay. The results indicated that the scalable inactivated rotavirus vaccines induced not only high serum IgG antibody and neutralizing antibody responses, but Th1 and Th2 cytokine-secreting cell responses in mice immunized by the inactivated rotavirus vaccines. These results suggest that the scalable inactivated rotavirus vaccine has good immunogenicity, which provided the base for the scaled development of inactivated rotavirus vaccine in the future.