| abstract |
A poliovirus (PV) strain was attenuated by a novel method of Cold-Adapted-Viral-Attenuation (CAVA). The resulting recombinant attenuated PV, CAVA-PV, shows wild- type replication at 30°C, but no substantial replication at 37°C. The inability to replicate at 37°C is defined by an inability to quantify virus during infection at this temperture by titration (infectious units), qPCR (viral RNA) or Electron Microscopy (visual signs of infection). CAVA-PV is genetically stable under production conditions and shows utility for use as the backbone to produce attenuated strains with the same antigenic profile as conventional vaccines by replacing the sequence coding for the capsid of CAVA-PV with sequences coding for capsids of different PV strains. Furthermore, mutations identified in CAVA-PV can be engineered into different, even wild-type and neurovirulent poliovirus background strains to obtain additional CAVA-PV strains. |