Generation and Evaluation of Chicken IgY-scFv for the Purposes of CPV Diagnosis and Therapy

Abstract

Background: Canine parvovirus (CPV) can cause acute and highly contagious enteritis in dog, antibodies have been used for diagnosis and therapy of CPV disease, generation of functional antibody fragments by using novel antibody engineering platforms is promising in veterinary practice. Results: The IgY single chain fragment variables (scFv) were generated by T7 phage display system and expressed in E. coli system after immunizing hens with virus-like particles (VLP) of CPV-VP2. The titer of the primary scFv library reached to 1.5×10 6 pfu/mL, and 95% of the phages contained the target fragments. The CPV-VLP and CPV-VP2 protein showed similar reaction values to the purified scFv in the ELISA test, and the results of ELISA analysis using IgY-scFv toward CPV clinical samples were consistent with commercial immunochromatographic assay (ICA) and PCR detection, the scFv did not show cross reactivity with canine distemper virus (CDV) and canine coronavirus (CCV). IgY-scFv was successfully expressed in CRFK cells, and in the virus suppression assay, 55% of CPV infections were eliminated within 24 hours. Docking results demonstrated that the number of amino acids of the binding sides between scFv and VP2 were AA37 and AA40, respectively. Conclusions: This study revealed the feasibility of a novel functional antibody fragment development strategy by generating diversified avian IgY-scFv libraries towards the pathogenic target of interest for both detection and therapeutic purposes in veterinary medicine.