Kim Baert, Bruno G De Geest, Henri De Greve, Eric Cox, Bert Devriendt

Designing efficient recombinant mucosal vaccines against enteric diseases is still a major challenge. Mucosal delivery of recombinant vaccines requires encapsulation in potent immunostimulatory particles to induce an efficient immune response. This paper evaluates the capacity of β-glucan microparticles (GPs) as antigen vehicles and characterizes their immune-stimulatory effects. The relevant infectious antigen FedF was chosen to be loaded inside the microparticles. The incorporation of FedF inside the particles was highly efficient (roughly 85%) and occurred without antigen degradation. In addition, these GPs have immunostimulatory effects as well, demonstrated by the strong reactive oxygen species (ROS) production by porcine neutrophils upon their recognition. Although antigen-loaded GPs still induce ROS production, antigen loading decreases this production by neutrophils for reasons yet unknown. However, these antigen-loaded GPs are still able to bind their specific β-glucan receptor, demonstrated by blocking complement receptor 3, which is the major β-glucan receptor on porcine neutrophils. The dual character of these particles is confirmed by a T-cell proliferation assay. FedF-loaded particles induce a significantly higher FedF-specific T-cell proliferation than soluble FedF. Taken together, these results show that GPs are efficient antigen carriers with immune-stimulatory properties.