Expression and Purification of a PEDV-Neutralizing Antibody and Its Functional Verification

Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) is a highly infectious and pathogenic virus causing high morbidity and mortality, especially in newborn piglets. There remain problems with contemporary PEDV vaccines, in part because of the rapid variation of PEDV, poor conferred immunity, and numerous side effects. The ability to produce PEDV-neutralizing antibodies suggests that we may be able to increase the success rate of PEDV prevention in piglets using these antibodies. In this study, we produced an anti-PEDV S protein monoclonal antibody (anti-PEDV mAb-2) that neutralized PEDV-CV777 (a G1 strain), PEDV-SDSX16 and PEDV-Aj1102 (two G2 strains). In vivo challenge experiments demonstrated that anti-PEDV mAb-2 inhibited the PEDV infection in piglets. We also produced three HEK293 cell lines that expressed anti-PEDV mAb-2. Overall, our study showed that anti-PEDV mAb-2 produced from hybridoma supernatants effectively inhibited PEDV infection in piglets, and the recombinant HEK293 cell lines expressed anti-PEDV mAb-2 genes.