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 pseudovirus (PV) has been shown to be highly sensitive and specific when used as a surrogate 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 chimeras using vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) G and the G from the RABV isolate CVS-11. Initial studies were undertaken to generate a chimeric G by splicing the ecto- and transmembrane domains of four AL RABV G strains with the cytoplasmic domains of VSV or CVS-11 G. PV were produced expressing wildtype or chimeric G, revealing the use of chimeric AL RABV with VSV G but not CVS-11 lead to an increase in PV titres. The production of a robust AL RABV PV will allow the efficacy of current animal vaccines to be tested against this subset of RABV. |
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