Identification of bovine Neospora caninum cytotoxic T-lymphocyte epitopes for development of peptide-based vaccine
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The goal of the one-year feasibility study was to identify specific cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes to Neosporacaninum in the natural bovine host in order to make progress toward developing an effective peptide-based vaccine against bovine neosporosis. We tested the hypothesis that: N. caninum SRS2 peptides contain immunogenicCTLepitope clusters cross-presented by multiple bovine MHC-I and MHC-IIhaplotypes. The specific objectives were: (1) Map bovine CTLepitopes of N. caninum NcSRS-2 and identify consensus MHC-I and class-II binding motifs; and (2) Determine if subunit immunization with peptides containing N. caninum-specificCTLepitopes cross-reactive to multiple bovine MHChaplotypes induces a CTL response in cattle with disparate MHChaplotypes. Neosporosis is a major cause of infectious abortion and congenital disease in cattle, persisting in cattle herds via vertical transmission.5 N. caninum abortions are reported in Israel; a serological survey of 52 Israeli dairy herds with reported abortions indicated a 31% infection rate in cows and 16% infection rate in aborted fetuses.9,14 Broad economic loss due to bovine neosporosis is estimated at $35,000,000 per year in California, USA, and $100,000,000 (Australian) per year in Australia and New Zealand.13 Per herd losses in a Canadian herd of 50 cattle are estimated more conservatively at $2,305 (Canadian) annually.4 Up to date practical measures to reduce losses from neosporosis in cattle have not been achieved. There is no chemotherapy available and, although progress has been made toward understanding immunity to Neospora infections, no efficacious vaccine is available to limit outbreaks or prevent abortions. Vaccine development to prevent N. caninum abortion and congenital infection remains a high research priority. To this end, our research group has over the past decade: 1) Identified the importance of T-lymphocyte-mediated immunity, particularly IFN-γ responses, as necessary for immune protection to congenital neosporosis in mice,1,2,10,11 and 2) Identified MHC class II restricted CD4+ CTL in Neosporainfected Holstein cattle,16 and 3) Identified NcSRS2 as a highly conserved surface protein associated with immunity to Neospora infections in mice and cattle.7,8,15 In this BARD-funded 12 month feasibility study, we continued our study of Neospora immunity in cattle and successfully completed T-lymphocyte epitope mapping of NcSRS2 surface protein with peptides and bovine immune cells,15 fulfilling objective 1. We also documented the importance of immune responses NcSRS2 by showing that immunization with native NcSRS2 reduces congenital Neospora transmission in mice,7 and that antibodies to NcSRS2 specifically inhibition invasion of placental trophoblasts.8 Most importantly we showed that T-lymphocyte responses similar to parasite infection, namely induction of activated IFN-γ secreting Tlymphocytes, could be induced by subunit immunization with NcSRS2 peptides containing the Neospora-specificCTLepitopes (Baszler et al, In preparation) fulfilling objective 2. Both DNA and peptide-based subunit approaches were tested. Only lipopeptide-based NcSRS2 subunits, modified with N-terminal linked palmitic acid to enhance Toll-like receptors 2 and 1 (TLR2-TLR1), stimulated robust antigen-specific T-lymphocyte proliferation, IFN-γ secretion, and serum antibody production across different MHC-IIhaplotypes. The discovery of MHC-II cross-reactive T-cellinducing parasite peptides capable of inducing a potentially protective immune response following subunit immunization in cattle is of significant practical importance to vaccine development to bovine neosporosis. In addition, our findings are more widely applicable in future investigations of protective T-cell, subunit-based immunity against other infectious diseases in outbred cattle populations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".