Development of Plant-Based Vaccines for Prevention of Avian Influenza and Newcastle Disease in Poultry

Abstract

Viral diseases, including avian influenza (AI) and Newcastle disease (ND), are an important cause of morbidity and mortality in poultry, resulting in significant economic losses. Despite the availability of commercial vaccines for the major viral diseases of poultry, these diseases continue to pose a significant risk to global food security. There are multiple factors for this: vaccine costs may be prohibitive, cold chain storage for attenuated live-virus vaccines may not be achievable, and commercial vaccines may protect poorly against local emerging strains. The development of transient gene expression systems in plants provides a versatile and robust tool to generate a high yield of recombinant proteins with superior speed while managing to achieve cost-efficient production. Plant-derived vaccines offer good stability and safety these include both subunit and virus-like particle (VLP) vaccines. VLPs offer potential benefits compared to currently available traditional vaccines, including significant reductions in virus shedding and the ability to differentiate between infected and vaccinated birds (DIVA). This review discusses the current state of plant-based vaccines for prevention of the AI and ND in poultry, challenges in their development, and potential for expanding their use in low- and middle-income countries.

Keywords: Agrobacterium tumefaciens; Newcastle disease virus; Nicotiana benthamiana; avian influenza virus; haemagglutinin protein; plant-based vaccines; transient expression; virus-like particles.

Figure 3

Summary of steps for production of plant-based vaccines. Created using some elements from Biorender.com (modified from Takeyama et al. [44]).

Figure 1

Graphical representation of the avian Influenza A virus particle. HA, haemagglutinin, NA, neuraminidase, M2, matrix protein 2, M1, matrix protein 1. Image created using BioRender.com.

Figure 2

Graphical representation of the Newcastle disease virus particle structure. Anchored to the surface of the virus particle envelope are haemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) and fusion (F) glycoproteins. Matrix (M) proteins are peripherally attached to the NDV envelope. The interior of the virus particle is composed of negative-sense single-stranded RNA and RNA-associated nucleoprotein (NP), phosphoprotein (P), and large polymerase (L). Adapted from [9].