ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Vaccines and Molecular Therapeutics
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1633661
This article is part of the Research TopicMucosal Immunity after VaccinationView all 5 articles
Recombinant SADS-CoV as a vector for porcine epidemic diarrhea vaccine development
Provisionally accepted
Xiaoling Yan1,2Xiaoli Zhang1,2Xiaocheng Lyu1,2,3Yaoyao Zheng1,2,3Qianniu Li1,2,3
Xiaoya Zhao1,2Jun Fu4*
Jingyun Ma1,2*- 1State Key Laboratory of Swine and Poultry Breeding Industry, Guangzhou, China
- 2South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China
- 3ArtemisShield Animal Health Co., Ltd., Guangzhou, China
- 4Shandong University-Helmholtz Institute of Biotechnology, State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology, Shandong University, Qingdao, China
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Swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV) is an emerging porcine enteric coronavirus that can cause diarrhea in piglets younger than 5 days of age.However, infection of pigs older than 5 days of age does not usually result in obvious clinical symptoms. This relative intrinsic safety in older animals prompted us to investigate the potential of SADS-CoV as a viral vector for porcine diarrhea virus vaccines. We utilized Gibson assembly to clone the SADS-CoV sequence into an artificial bacterial chromosome (BAC) vector. Further manipulation was carried out by recombineering to generate four attenuated recombinant SADS-CoV strains expressing a porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) protective antigen fused with peptides that target immune cells. The recombinant viruses exhibited a proliferation profile similar to that of the wild-type virus in Vero cells, maintained stable cytopathic effects, retained the exogenous sequences for up to 20 passages, and consistently expressed the PEDV antigen fusion protein. Immunizing pregnant sows with these recombinant viruses effectively enhanced both cellular and mucosal immune responses and provided significant clinical protection against PEDV to their offspring. This study not only generated a vaccine candidate for PEDV but also established a pipeline for using the SADS-CoV as a vector for vaccine development.
Keywords: Swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus, Reverse Genetics, attenuation, viral vector vaccines, Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus (PEDV)
Received: 23 May 2025; Accepted: 21 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yan, Zhang, Lyu, Zheng, Li, Zhao, Fu and Ma. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jun Fu, Shandong University-Helmholtz Institute of Biotechnology, State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology, Shandong University, Qingdao, China
Jingyun Ma, State Key Laboratory of Swine and Poultry Breeding Industry, Guangzhou, China
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