Responses of Humoral and Cellular Immune Mediators in BALB/c Mice to LipX (PE11) as Seed Tuberculosis Vaccine Candidates.

A member of the / gene family, (), is capable of directing persistent and avoiding host immune responses. Some studies have indicated that LipX (PE11) can detect humoral antibodies in tuberculosis patients. Hence, information on immune mediators' responses to this protein is essential to understand its protective efficacy against infections. This study aimed to examine the response of immune mediators to pCDNA3.1- expression in vivo. In the experiment, pCDNA3.1- was injected into BALB/c strain male mice aged between 6 and 8 weeks, and they were compared to groups injected with pCDNA3.1 and without injection. The injection was carried out three times intramuscularly every two weeks. Blood was taken retro-orbitally and used for humoral response analysis by Western blotting against LipX-His protein. Simultaneously, the splenocytes were cultured and induced with LipX-His protein for cellular immunity analyses. Our study showed that the recombinant DNA of pCDNA3.1- induced a humoral and cellular immune response, especially in IL-4, IL-12, and IFN-γ, which are the primary cellular responses to infections. However, additional studies, such as a challenge study, are needed to strengthen the argument that this plasmid construction is feasible as a tuberculosis seed vaccine candidate.