ALTEX :: Alternatives to Animal Experiments

1998, Supplement

Development of an Alternative Method to the Monkey Neurovirulence Test for Oral Poliovirus Vaccines

Artur Kaul, Micha Nuebling, Martina Kempfer, Ivo Schmidt, and Johannes Loewer

Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, D-Langen

SUMMARY

Each oral poliovirus vaccine lot contains attenuated and small amounts of wild-type viruses. Vaccines containing more than a certain limit of wild-type viruses may cause a vaccine associated poliomyelitis. To provide safe vaccines for humans, each newly manufactured vaccine lot is tested in the monkey neurovirulence test. A certain point mutation on the poliovirus genome has been shown to be responsible for the attenuated phenotype of the vaccine virus. We developed a quantitative PCR method to determine the wild-type proportion at position 472 of poliovirus type three genome.

This method possibly can be used as an alternative for the monkey neurovirulence test.

This project was supported by the Foundation Research 3R, CH-Muensingen.

Keywords: quantitative polymerase chain reaction, oral poliovirus vaccine, monkey neurovirulence test, vaccine associated poliomyelitis, point mutations