Induction of antibodies against SIV antigens after intramuscular nucleic acid inoculation using complex expression constructs.

By studying the infection of rhesus macaques with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIVmac) the potential of nucleic acid immunisation against AIDS can be evaluated. As a first step towards the development of suitable expression constructs, the levels and the durations of expression elicited by the house-keeping gene promoters of the murine phospho-glycerate kinase (PGK) gene and rat proto-ras 1Ha, a lentiviral LTR and the CMV-intron A promoter were tested in BALB/c mice intramuscularly inoculated with marker gene constructs encoding luciferase. The expression levels achieved by the CMV-intron A and the lentiviral promoter were comparably high, and also the PGK promoter induced a high level of expression for at least 64 days. Following the inoculation of plasmids comprising single or multiple genes of SIV, the induction of specific antibodies directed against SIV antigens was demonstrated. We previously showed in vitro that int- and nef-defective mutants of SIVmac were able to initiate a limited and self-abortive infection of permissive cells in the absence of chromosomal integration of the viral DNA. Intramuscular inoculations in monkeys using int-defective proviral DNA of SIV will show whether an increased immune response may be induced by expression of viruses undergoing a self-limited replication in vivo.