Vaccination of puppies with a lipid-formulated plasmid vaccine protects against a severe canine distemper virus challenge.

We assessed whether the formulation of a DNA vaccine expressing the canine distemper virus (CDV) hemagglutinin (HA) and fusion (F) immunogens with the cationic lipid DMRIE-DOPE could induce serological responses and protection against a severe CDV challenge in the dog. Although clear protection was observed in dogs vaccinated with formulated plasmids only limited CDV specific antibody titers were observed in protected dogs before challenge, suggesting that protection could be explained by cell-mediated immunity and/or by a strong antibody-based memory response (priming) triggered by the infectious challenge. The high level of protection achieved in this study, demonstrated that formulated DNA CDV vaccines can generate in dogs a level a protection comparable to conventional CDV vaccines. Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd.