Establishment of indirect immunofluorescence assay for rotavirus

Rotavirus infection is the most frequent cause of infantile gastroenteritis worldwide and a significant cause of death in infants and young children, following severe diarrhea and dehydration. Rotavirus vaccines are considered the most effective way to prevent rotavirus infections. In the process of developing rotavirus vaccines, it is crucial to establish a reliable and standardized method to determine vaccine titer. In this study, we developed an indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA) to determine the infectious titer of Lanzhou lamb rotavirus (LLR) vaccine grown in MA104 cells. The activating concentration of trypsin was 1 µg/ml for healthy monolayers of MA104 cells at 100% confluence. After incubation for 18 hr, a rabbit anti-SA11 polyclonal antibody, diluted at 1:800 in PBS, was added to all wells, followed by an Alexa-488-conjugated secondary antibody diluted at 1:500 in PBS. Cells were examined with a fluorescence microscope. Our results show that IFA was more reproducible, more sensitive, simpler, and more rapid than the log 50% cell culture infectious dose-ELISA (lgCCID50-ELISA) in measuring the rotavirus vaccines. IFA provided a reliable basis for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of rotavirus, and the certification of rotavirus vaccine production.