SELECTION OF CANDIDATE STRAIN FOR VACCINE AGAINST BOVINE CORONAVIRUS PRODUCTION

Abstract

Bovine coronavirus (BCoV) is one of the most common viruses in the world, causing the disease in domestic cows. This is the virus that causes diarrhea in adult animals and infections of the respiratory and gastrointestinal tract in young cattle, leading to significant economic losses in both dairy and beef animal breeding. BCoV has one serotype with some antigenic variations between different strains and, like other RNA viruses, mutates in the field conditions, and now the isolated isolates have antigenic differences from the strains of viruses isolated previously. That is why vaccines containing more modern or widely cross-reactive strains of bovine coronavirus are needed to increase the effectiveness of animal protection. The aim of this study was to select the most promising strain of bovine coronavirus isolates isolated in Ukraine for the construction of an effective inactivated vaccine. For this purpose, a cross-neutralization reaction was performed and the antigenic relationship, difference and dominance between the studied field isolates and the reference strain of bovine coronavirus were studied. According to the study’s results, there are close antigenic linkages between the studied field isolates and the reference strain, as the antigenic relationship between the studied isolates and the reference was in the range of 83-100%, which confirms the fact that they belong to the same serological subtype. According to the research results, the field isolate of bovine coronavirus CV-315 dominates over the reference KL-2 and field isolates CV-114 and CV-172, so it is recommended for use as a new production (vaccine) strain for the development of an effective inactivated bovine coronavirus vaccine.