Gene Expression Analysis of Bovine Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells in Response to Adenovirus-Vectored Foot-and-Mouth Disease Vaccine

Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) gives rise to a highly contagious and economically important disease of cloven-hooved animals. Vaccination reduces the economic impact by inducing serotype-specific protection. Recently, a replication-defective adenovirus-vectored foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) subunit vaccine was developed and licensed. Serum virus neutralization (SVN) titer ≥1.5 to FMDV is the best predictor of vaccine-induced protection. However, protection does not always correlate with the presence of neutralizing antibodies. For example, some animals with high SVN titer develop signs of disease, and conversely, some animals with negligible SVN titer are protected. Categorizing cattle on the parameters of seroconversion and protection status yields four groups of cattle. Two of these groups are the expected outcome, protected with SVN titer ≥1.2 and unprotected with SVN tite