Serological Evaluation of Turkey Herpesvirus Vector Vaccines Expressing the Hemagglutinin Gene of Avian Influenza Virus H5 Subtype under Three Different Promoters

Marek's disease virus, including turkey herpesvirus (HVT), have been utilized as vectors to express foreign antigen genes and induce immunity against the antigens in chickens. Selection of promoters in developing such vector vaccines is one of the most important factors influencing efficacy of vector vaccines. In this study, in order to find a suitable promoter for expressing the hemagglutinin gene of avian influenza virus H5 subtype in HVT vector vaccines, three HVT vector avian influenza virus H5 subtype (HVT-AI) viruses expressing the hemagglutinin gene were constructed using three promoters; the cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter, the chicken beta-actin (Bac) promoter, and CMV/Bac chimera (Pec) promoter. Of those three vector vaccines, HVT-AI with the CMV promoter induced significantly higher avian influenza virus (AIV) hemagglutinin inhibition titers than the other HVT-AI vaccines with the Bac or the Pec promoters, after inoculation into chickens at one day old. When evaluated with two of commercially available AIV enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kits, the HVT-AI vaccines did not induce positive titers, indicating that these HVT-AI vaccines may be utilized for easy differentiation of vaccinated chickens from ones infected with field AIV.