Elsevier

Vaccine

Volume 29, Issue 22, 17 May 2011, Pages 3837-3841
Vaccine

Short communication
Epidemiology of adenovirus type 5 neutralizing antibodies in healthy people and AIDS patients in Guangzhou, southern China

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2011.03.042Get rights and content

Abstract

Recombinant adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5) viruses have been extensively explored as vectors for vaccination or gene therapy. However, one major obstacle to their clinical application is the high prevalence of preexisting anti-Ad5 immunity resulting from natural infection. It has been reported that there are geographic variations in the prevalence of natural adenovirus infection. In the present study, we investigated the seroprevalence of Ad5 in Guangzhou, southern China by measuring the Ad5 neutralizing antibodies in blood samples collected from several sites. The seroprevalence was 77.34% in the general healthy population. The seroprevalence and antibody titers increased with age, with the older population (41-72 years old) having the highest seropositivity (84.8%) and percentage (54.4%) of high Ad5 neutralizing antibody titers (>1000). The dynamics of Ad5 neutralizing antibodies were stable and persistent over the course of eight months. Furthermore, the seroprevalence of Ad5 in the HIV-infected AIDS patients was investigated and there was no significant difference from the general healthy population. Our survey provides useful insights for the future development of Ad5-based vaccination and gene therapy.

Section snippets

Background

Recombinant adenoviruses, especially replication-defective adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5), have been extensively explored as vectors for gene therapy or vaccines against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis virus, influenza virus, other infectious diseases and cancers [1], [2], [3], [4]. However, the practical application of Ad5 has been potentially limited by the high prevalence of preexisting anti-Ad5 immunity. Both preclinical animal models and human clinical trials have demonstrated

Human samples

Serum samples were isolated from 278 healthy participants and 32 HIV-infected AIDS patients in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, southern China. The participants’ ages ranged from 6 to 72 years old, and the sex ratio was approximately 1:1 (male:female = 51.8%:48.2%). The samples from healthy participants were collected from the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Guangzhou Children's Hospital, and Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health (GIBH), and the samples from

Confirmation of Ad5 neutralizing antibody titers by western blot analyses

To confirm whether the titers calculated using the above methods Ad5 neutralizing assay were correlated with the actual statuses of pre-existing antibodies specifically recognizing Ad5 proteins, samples with different titers (<18, 18–200, 200–1000, >1000) of Ad5 neutralizing antibodies were analyzed by western blot analyses. As shown in Fig. 1, the results obtained by those two methods are concurrent with each other. The sera with the highest Ad5 neutralizing antibodies titer (>1,000) had the

Discussion

Human adenovirus type 5 belongs to the mastadenovirus family in the order of adenoviridae, and is a non-segmented, double stranded, non-enveloped DNA virus. Recombinant Ad5 has been extensively exploited as a gene delivery vehicle for vaccination and gene therapy attributing to its relatively well understood biology: good safety record from many clinical trials, no integration into the host genome, ability to infect a variety of cell types, and capable of production in high yield and titer.

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSCX1-YW-10, KSCX2-EW-J-27), the National Key Science & Technology Specific Projects of China (2008ZX10001-011), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81000737), and the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars of China (No.30688004). We gratefully acknowledge Yichu Liu and Xuehua Zheng for their technical supports.

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