Tembusu virus (TMUV) is a member of genus flavivirus, which mainly causes decrease in production in egg ducks and neurological symptom in meatducks, causing serious economic losses to the poultry industry. Recently, the commercialized TMUV vaccines are mainly the WF100 live vaccine and the attenuated live vaccine (FX2010-180P), so it is particularly important to find new methods to combat TMUV. The capsid-targeted viral inactivation (CTVI) strategy is based on a viral core protein and an exogenous factor that can destroy viral DNA or RNA. Lentivirus vectors are an effective tool for transferring the recombinant lentiviruses to target cells and are a promising system for efficient gene delivery. This study injected recombinant lentivirus carrying the Cap-SNase and Cap-Linker-SNase fusion proteins into duck early embryos at 109 TU/mL, achieving widespread expression of the fusion proteins in duck embryo tissues. After TMUV infection, the symptoms of the ducks in the Cap-SNase and Cap-Linker-SNase groups were significantly alleviated to the 1640 group. Pathological sections showed that compared with the 1640 group, the pathological damage in the Cap-SNase and Cap-Linker-SNase groups was greatly alleviated, and the virus loads in the feces, blood and tissues of Cap-SNase or Cap-Linker-SNase groups were significantly lower than those in the 1640 group. The results indicate that the Cap-SNase or Cap-Linker-SNase fusion proteins delivered by lentivirus have anti-TMUV effect. This study combines lentiviral vectors with CTVI strategy for the first time, which could be a simple and practical technology to treating human or animal diseases or biomedical animals.
Keywords: Antivirus; Lentivirus vector; Tembusu virus.
Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.