An Improved αvβ6-Receptor-Expressing Suspension Cell Line for Foot-and-Mouth Disease Vaccine Production

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is endemic in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and South America, where outbreaks in cloven-hooved livestock threaten food security and have severe economic impacts. Vaccination in endemic regions remains the most effective control strategy. Current FMD vaccines are produced from chemically inactivated foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) grown in suspension cultures of baby hamster kidney 21 cells (BHK-21). Strain diversity means vaccines produced from one subtype may not fully protect against circulating disparate subtypes, necessitating the development of new vaccine strains that "antigenically match". However, some viruses have proven difficult to adapt to cell culture, slowing the manufacturing process, reducing vaccine yield and limiting the availability of effective vaccines, as well as potentiating the selection of undesired antigenic changes. To circumvent the need to cell culture adapt FMDV, we have used a systematic approach to develop recombinant suspension BHK-21 that stably express the key FMDV receptor integrin αvβ6. We show that αvβ6 expression is retained at consistently high levels as a mixed cell population and as a clonal cell line. Following exposure to field strains of FMDV, these recombinant BHK-21 facilitated higher virus yields compared to both parental and control BHK-21, whilst demonstrating comparable growth kinetics. The presented data supports the application of these recombinant αvβ6-expressing BHK-21 in future FMD vaccine production.