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Infection and Immunity, June 2004, p. 3471-3477, Vol. 72, No. 6
0019-9567/04/$08.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/IAI.72.6.3471-3477.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Contribution of Immunological Memory to Protective Immunity Conferred by a Bacillus anthracis Protective Antigen-Based Vaccine

Hadar Marcus,1 Rachel Danieli,1 Eyal Epstein,1 Baruch Velan,2 Avigdor Shafferman,2* and Shaul Reuveny1

Department of Biotechnology,1 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, Israel Institute for Biological Research, 74100 Ness-Ziona, Israel2

Received 31 December 2003/ Returned for modification 13 February 2004/ Accepted 2 March 2004

Protective antigen (PA)-based vaccination is an effective countermeasure to anthrax infection. While neutralizing anti-PA antibody titers elicited by this vaccine serve as good correlates for protection against anthrax (S. Reuveny, M. D. White, Y. Y. Adar, Y. Kafri, Z. Altboum, Y. Gozes, D. Kobiler, A. Shafferman, and B. Velan, Infect. Immun. 69:2888-2893, 2001), no data are available on the contribution of the immunological memory for PA itself to protection. We therefore developed a guinea pig model in which a primary immunization with threshold levels of PA can induce a long-term T-cell immunological memory response without inducing detectable anti-PA antibodies. A revaccination of primed animals with the same threshold PA levels was effective for memory activation, yielding a robust and rapid secondary response. A challenge with a lethal dose (40 50% lethal doses; 2,000 spores) of spores after the booster vaccinations indicated that animals were not protected at days 2, 4, and 6 postboosting. Protection was achieved only from the 8th day postboosting, concomitant with the detection of protective levels of neutralizing antibody titers in the circulation. The practical implications from the studies reported herein are that, as expected, the protective capacity of memory depends on the PA dose used for the primary immunization and that the effectiveness of booster immunizations for the postexposure treatment of anthrax may be very limited when no detectable antibodies are present in primed animals prior to Bacillus anthracis spore exposure. Therefore, to allow for the establishment of memory-dependent protection prior to the expected onset of disease, booster immunizations should not be used without concomitant antimicrobial treatment in postexposure scenarios.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: P.O. Box 19, 74100 Ness-Ziona, Israel. Phone: 972-8-9381595. Fax: 972-8-9401404. E-mail: avigdor{at}iibr.gov.il.

Editor: D. L. Burns

Infection and Immunity, June 2004, p. 3471-3477, Vol. 72, No. 6
0019-9567/04/$08.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/IAI.72.6.3471-3477.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



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