The influence of therapeutic vaccine candidate against HBeAg pEGFP-N1-C (472-507)-ecdCD40L on dendritic cells.

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a major public health problem and immune tolerance is responsible for persistent HBV infection. HBV therapeutic vaccines targeting HBV e antigen (HBeAg) may have an excellent effect in overcoming HBV immune tolerance. Thus, there is urgency for designing therapeutic vaccine candidates that target HBeAg. In this research, we fused the C (472-507) gene sequence of HBV with the extracellular domain of human CD40 ligand sequence and ligated this fused sequence into the pEGFP-N1 vector to construct the recombinant plasmid pEGFP-N1-C (472-507)-ecdCD40L. Then, the dendritic cells (DCs) generated from human peripheral blood were transfected with this recombinant plasmid. After this, the phenotype and function of DCs were assessed. Compared with the three control groups of pEGFP-N1-C (472-507), pEGFP-N1 and phosphate buffered saline (PBS), we found that DCs transfected with the recombinant plasmid pEGFP-N1-C (472-507)-ecdCD40L enhanced the expression of costimulatory molecules (CD80, CD86 and HLA-DR) and secretion of cytokine IL-12p70. Furthermore, the capacity of inducing the proliferation of allogeneic lymphocytes was also improved. Our study validated that transfecting DCs with recombinant plasmid pEGFP-N1-C (472-507)-ecdCD40L could activate DCs and enhance their functions. Therefore, C (472-507)-ecdCD40L fusion sequence may be a promising vaccine candidate for chronic hepatitis B therapythat targets HBeAg.