The rVSV-EBOV vaccine provides limited cross-protection against Sudan virus in guinea pig

Sudan virus (SUDV), belonging to the Filoviridae family, caused high mortality among humans during the 2022 pandemic in Uganda. The research and manufacturing of vaccine is of critical urgency to mitigate SUDV infection. The clinical efficacy of the filovirus vaccines based on recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV) has been demonstrated and evaluated on Ebola virus (EBOV), and rVSV-EBOV exhibit cross-protective effect against other filoviruses. Meanwhile, efficacy of other rVSV-based filovirus vaccine remains uncertain at the laboratory level due to interference from various factors in animal experiment, rendering it challenging to evaluate. Thus, this study aimed to investigate rVSV-SUDV efficacy and rVSV-EBOV cross-protection to SUDV on guinea pig models that are used for countermeasure evaluation in filovirus vaccine.  In conclusion, the administration of rVSV-SUDV demonstrated protective effect against SUDV infection in guinea pig. rVSV-EBOV vaccination implied cross-protective effect in guinea pig infected with SUDV. However, this study indicated that rVSV-SUDV vaccination administrated to guinea pigs that infected SUDV did not confer cross-protective effect against EBOV.  This research provides evidence to support that rVSV-based filovirus vaccine has the capability to induce cross-protective immune response in guinea pig models. However, certain rVSV-based filovirus vaccines elicit different cross-reactive immune response to various filovirus infection.

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