Human and rodent humoral immune responses to Andes virus structural proteins

In the present work we identified B-cell epitopes recognized by sera of humans and rodents naturally infected with Andes virus, a hantavirus present in Chile and Argentina. Analysis of patient and rodent sera with overlapping peptides revealed 21 human and rodent epitopes on the three structural proteins. Whereas in the nucleoprotein the region comprising aa 248-260 was shown to be the key determinant of human sera, the major antigenic site of rodent antibody reactivity is located at aa 326-338. In G1, the main epitope recognized by human sera was mapped to aa 14-26, while rodent antibodies bound predominantly to aa 599-611. In contrast, humans and mice had strong responses to three regions in G2 (aa 691-703, aa 918-930, aa 955-967), of which the last two are associated with neutralization of Hantaan virus. This insight affords important information for the development of immunotherapies for the acute phase of hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome.