Recombinant measles viruses expressing heterologous antigens of mumps and simian immunodeficiency viruses.

We have genetically engineered a panel of recombinant measles viruses (rMVs) that express from various positions within the MV genome either the HN or F surface glycoproteins of mumps virus (MuV) or the env, gag or pol proteins from simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). All rMVs were rescued from the respective antigenomic plasmid constructs; progeny viruses replicated comparably to the progenitor Edmonston B MV, but showed slight propagation retardation, which was dependent on the size and nature of the expressed proteins and on the genomic position of the inserts. All transgenes except that encoding mumps F glycoprotein were faithfully maintained and expressed even after virus amplification by 10(20). Our results suggest possible applications of rMVs as live-attenuated, multivalent vaccines against retroviruses such as SIV and HIV as well as other pathogens more distantly related to MV than MuV.