Expression, Purification, and Evaluation of Diagnostic Potential and Immunogenicity of a Recombinant NS3 Protein from All Serotypes of Dengue Virus

• Published in: Journal of Tropical Medicine
• Main Authors: Laura Mónica Álvarez-Rodríguez, Angel Ramos-Ligonio, José Luis Rosales-Encina, María Teresa Martínez-Cázares, Aurora Parissi-Crivelli, Aracely López-Monteon
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Hindawi Limited 2012
• Subjects: Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/956875; https://doaj.org/article/e6d632e18c8a413389d25d6e76b00b64

Dengue is one of the major public health concerns in the world. Since all the four serotypes are actively circulating in Mexico, there is a need to develop an efficient diagnosis system to improve case management of the patients. There exist few studies evaluating the use of the NS3 protein as a protective antigen against dengue virus (DENV). In this paper we show the expression of a recombinant NS3 protein from all serotypes of dengue virus (GST-DVNS3-1-4) and report a reliable “in-house detection system” for the diagnosis of dengue infection which was field-tested in a small village (Tezonapa) in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. The fusion proteins were immunogenic, inducing antibodies to be able to recognize to antigens up to a 1 : 3200 dilution. The purified proteins were used to develop an in-house detection system (ELISA) and were further tested with a panel of 239 serum samples. The in-house results were in excellent agreement with the commercial kits with κ=0.934±0.064 (95% CI = 0.808–1.061), and κ=0.872±0.048 (95% CI = 0.779–0.965) for IgM and IgG, respectively. The agreement between the NS1 antigen detection versus the rNS3 ELISA, κ=0.837±0.066 (95% CI = 0.708–0.966), was very good. Thus, these results demonstrate that recombinant NS3 proteins have potential in early diagnosis of dengue infections.