Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (HFMD) is an endemic childhood disease in Southeast Asia, with substantial disease burden affecting millions of children each year. Occasionally the central nervous system is involved causing serious and sometimes fatal neurological complications. HFMD outbreaks are also observed outside the Asia-Pacific countries. HFMD can be caused by multiple enteroviruses of which the best known virus is EVA71. However, also other enteroviruses such as CVA6, CVA10 and CVA16 can cause the disease. Inactivated EVA71 vaccines are registered in China, but in order to prevent all HFMD cases, multivalent vaccines are warranted. Intravacc is developing an HFMD combination vaccine.
Here we used our rescue platform to generate the starting materials required for vaccine production. Infectious clones from EVA71_B4, EVA71_C4, CVA6, CVA10 and CVA16 were constructed and the corresponding enteroviruses were rescued. Virus seeds were produced on Vero cells in animal component free medium. Rescued enteroviruses could efficiently replicate, resulting in seed lots with high viral titers. This rescue platform has the major advantage that clinical isolates are not required to obtain the starting material to produce a vaccine, thus mitigating the risk that other, unwanted, viruses are also present. Next to that, the virus source is pre-designed, controlled and well documented.
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