| Summary: | Arctic-like rabies (AL RABV) viruses, a lineage of RABV circulating widely in the Middle East and Asia, have distinct antigenic and genetic characteristics. Similar to other members of the RABV species, they cause a zoonotic disease ultimately leading to death of infected patients. RABV glycoprotein (G) lentiviral pseudovirus (PV) has shown to be a highly sensitive and specific surrogate to live virus in neutralisation assays. However, using wildtype AL RABV G failed to generate infectious PV. Thus, we investigated the generation of chimeric AL RABV G to increase the PV titre. Chimeras were constructed by splicing the ecto- and transmembrane domains of four AL RABV G strains with the cytoplasmic domains of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) or RABV challenge virus standard-11 (CVS-11) G. PV produced expressing wildtype or chimeric G revealed chimeric AL RABV with VSV G but not CVS-11 significantly increased PV titres. Hence we have sought to undertake neutralisation studies with the AL RABV VSV G chimeras, testing the efficacy of current vaccines and antivirals against this RABV subset.
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