A truncated variant of the hepatitis C virus core induces a slow but potent immune response in mice following DNA immunization.

Vaccination of BALB/c mice with pIDKCo, a plasmid containing the coding sequence for the first 176 amino acids of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) core protein, induced both humoral and cellular specific immune responses. Particularly, 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 were able to inhibit at different extent the binding of mouse anti-core sera to a recombinant capsid protein. Our results show that it is possible to elicit a potent humoral and cellular immune response against the HCV core antigen in mice following DNA immunization.