Abstract | Arctic-like rabies viruses (AL RABV) are a lineage of rabies viruses circulating widely in the Middle East and Asia, with distinct antigenic and genetic characteristics. As with other members of the RABV species they can cause a zoonotic disease that ultimately leads to death of infected patients. RABV glycoprotein (G) lentiviral pseudotypes (PV) have been shown to be highly sensitive and specific when used as surrogates for live virus in neutralisation assays. However, using wildtype AL RABV glycoprotein failed to generate any infectious PV. Therefore, we sought to determine if it was possible to increase the biological titre of AL RABV PV through the construction of chimeric RABV and vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) G. Initial studies were undertaken to generate a chimeric G by splicing the ecto-and transmembrane domains of an Indian AL RABV G strain with the cytoplasmic domain of VSV G. PV were produced using wildtype and chimeric G, revealing a 125 fold increase in titre for the chimeric G PV. Similar mutations were undertaken with other AL RABV allowing the efficacy of current animal vaccines to be tested against this subset of RABV. |
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