A general method for the construction of recombinant vaccinia viruses expressing multiple foreign genes.

Plasmid vectors with multiple cloning sites adjacent to a vaccinia virus (VV) promoter were constructed and used to insert a protein coding sequence and a dominant selectable marker into a non-essential region of the VV genome. Recombinant viruses, selected on the basis of expression of the herpes simplex virus (HSV) thymidine kinase gene (tk), were shown to express in infected cells the model gene product, murine major histocompatibility complex (MHC) antigen H-2Kd, by cell-surface binding of antibody and by MHC-restricted recognition by cytotoxic T lymphocytes. Double recombinant VVs with insertions at two sites (in the VV tk gene and in the VV HindIII-F region) were constructed and shown to express influenza A/PR/8/34 haemagglutinin and H-2Kd antigen in addition to the HSV tk gene. The plasmids described allow the construction of recombinant VV expressing two genes of interest under the control of the same VV promoter. Such recombinant VVs can be used to study the interaction of immunologically important antigens simultaneously expressed.