• Vaccine Name: T. cruzi Vaccine encoding ASP2 with Rapamycin
• Target Pathogen: Trypanosoma cruzi
• Target Disease: Chagas disease
• Type: DNA vaccine
• Status: Research
• Host Species for Licensed Use: None
• Antigen: ASP2 (Moraschi et al., 2021)
• amastigote surface protein-2 gene engineering:
  • Type: DNA vaccine construction
  • Description: The ASP2 antigen is expressed in the
  • Detailed Gene Information: Click Here.
• Immunization Route: Intramuscular injection (i.m.)
• Description: This prime-booster vaccine encoding ASP2 alongside rapamycin treatment is made by having pCDNA plasmid encoding ASP2 and a recombinant replication-deficient human adenovirus type 5 (HuAd5) vaccine vector also encoding ASP2 (Rigato et al., 2011),; futhermore, the rapamycin treatment is used as an adjuvant to enhance the vaccine immune response (Moraschi et al., 2021).

Mouse Response

• Host Strain: C57BL/6
• Host age: 8 weeks old
• Host gender: Male and Female
• Vaccination Protocol: The protocol consists of a dose of plasmid DNA, with the vectors pcDNA3 (control) or pIgSPClone9, at 10 or 100 μg/mouse. Three weeks after the first immunization, mice were immunized with 2 x 10^7 or 2 x 10^8 pfu of the adenoviral vectors Adβ-Gal (control) or AdASP-2. Both immunizations were performed by intramuscular route in the Tibialis anterior muscle. Experimental groups were delineated as follows: 1) Control: immunized with the control vectors pcDNA3 and Adβ-Gal; 2) ASP2: immunized with pIgSPCl.9/AdASP-2 and vehicle-injected (PBS); 3) ASP2/rapamycin: immunized with pIgSPCl.9/AdASP-2 and rapamycin-treated. Mice were treated every 24 hours with 2 μg rapamycin (Sigma Aldrich) per mouse (0.075 mg/kg/day), diluted in 0.2 mL PBS via intraperitoneal (i.p.) for 34 days, starting at priming. Control mice were treated with the vehicle (PBS) (Moraschi et al., 2021).
• Immune Response: The number of CD8+ T-cells that simultaneously express IFNγ, TNF and CD107a, named polyfunctional subpopulation, were increased in rapamycin-treated mice (Gr.3), compared with vehicle-injected mice (Gr.2). the magnitude of responding CD8+ T-cells (frequency of cells that express at least one of the three molecules IFNγ or TNF or CD107a after ex vivo stimulus with the specific peptide) was also higher in rapamycin treated mice (Moraschi et al., 2021).