Development of a competitive ELISA method based on VLPs detecting the antibodies of serotype A FMDV

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is the highly contagious disease of cloven-hoofed animal that brings considerable economic losses to the animal husbandry. So FMD surveillance which relying on accurate diagnosis is important. Most producing the diagnostic antigen of inactivated FMD virus (FMDV) requires facilities with high biosafety. In our previous studies, virus-like particles(VLPs) resembled the structures of natural virus particles. Here, we established a competitive ELISA (cELISA) method for the detection of antibodies against serotype A FMDV based on serotype A FMDV-VLPs. Via detecting different positive serum and negative serum with different titers, and comparing with different commercial ELISA kits. The specificity and sensitivity of the assay were 100 % and 98 %, respectively. The coincidence rate using the PrioCHECK® FMDV Type A antibody ELISA kit and Liquid-phase blocking (LPB) ELISA were 95.30 % and 92.2 %. Repetitive experiments showed that variation coefficient of intra-batch and inter-batch were less than 9 % and 13 %. The result demonstrated that cELISA based on VLPs from prokaryotic system is highly specific, sensitive and reproducible. The cELISA could also be used to assess the immune responses of serotype A FMDV, especially in developing countries.