Vaccines for Canine Parvovirus

Canine parvovirus (CPV) is a non-enveloped, single-stranded DNA virus that can cause severe myocarditis, enteritis, and lymphopenia in dogs. Prophylactic vaccination for CPV is common practice around the world, but in recent years genetic mutations have led to the emergence of new CPV strains and traditional vaccines cannot protect dogs from attack by these strains. As a result, there is an urgent need to develop new and safe vaccines to include current prevalent strains.

Background of Canine Parvovirus

CPV belongs to the genus Protoparvovirus of the Parvoviridae family and causes highly contagious and fatal diseases in dogs. CPV is a non-enveloped DNA virus with a single-stranded DNA genome of approximately 5,000 nucleotides containing two open reading frames (ORFs). The first ORF encodes two non-structural proteins, NS1 and NS2 and the second ORF encode two structural proteins, VP1 and VP2. VP1 and VP2 each encode parts of the viral capsid, which is assembled from 54 copies of VP2 and 6 copies of VP1. VP2 is the major capsid protein and the major antigenic protein, which determines viral tissue tropism and host range. NS1 is a pleiotropic nuclear phosphoprotein that plays an important role in viral replication and is responsible for inducing apoptosis.

Since the initial identification of canine parvovirus type 2 (CPV2), a series of mutant variants, including CPV-2a, CPV-2b, and CPV-2c, have emerged, leading to an increased prevalence of CPV. As the CPV-2 variants differ by only a number of amino acids, vaccination of dogs with vaccines containing CPV-2 strains, or one of its variants, has been shown to cross-protect against virulent heterologous challenge strains. Most vaccines are modified based on the original virus type CPV-2 or CPV-2b. Therefore, the development of a new and safe vaccine based on the current prevalent antigenic type is urgently needed considering the high rate of generation of new CPV strains.

Vaccines for Canine Parvovirus

• Live attenuated vaccines

The live attenuated CPV vaccines derived from either CPV2b isolates or the original type 2 virus, which provided excellent protection and longer duration of immunity. Effective modified live virus (MLV) vaccines containing a CPV-2 or CPV-2b strain are generally available in Creative Biolabs for generating a high degree of cross-protection between the virus types.

• DNA vaccines

By cloning the CPV-VP2 gene into a replicon-based DNA vaccine vector, Creative Biolabs developed a replicon-based DNA vaccine encoding the CPV VP2 gene. The vaccine is capable of inducing CPV-specific humoral and cell-mediated immune responses. DNA vaccines have several advantages over conventional CPV vaccines, including, eliminating the use of adjuvant and effective in presence of maternally derived antibodies (MDA) in age at which the animal is supposed to be immune.

• Virus-like particles (VLPs) vaccines

VLPs can be obtained by the self-assembly of one or several viral structural proteins produced in expression systems. The VP2 proteins play an important role in stimulating protective immunity and can self-assemble into VLPs with antigenic properties similar to those of natural CPV and with an especially high hemagglutination titer. The outstanding advantages of VLPs are their safety and high immunogenicity, which can open up new areas of vaccine development. Therefore, CPV VLPs can be considered as a vaccine against CPV or as a research platform for chimeric VLPs vaccines against other diseases.

Our Services for Vaccines of Canine Parvovirus

• Isolation of CPV strains
• Construction of recombinant vaccine vector
• Production and purification of VLPs
• Evaluation of immune effects
• Statistical analysis

With advanced vaccine development platforms and professional teams, Creative Biolabs provides a variety of safe and efficient CPV-based vaccines that contain the newest antigenic types of a given virus. If you have any needs in this regard, please feel free to contact us.

All of our products can only be used for research purposes. These vaccine ingredients CANNOT be used directly on humans or animals.