Efficacy of Single Dose of a Bivalent Vaccine Containing Inactivated Newcastle Disease Virus and Reassortant Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1 Virus against Lethal HPAI and NDV Infection in Chickens

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and Newcastle disease (ND) are 2 devastating diseases of poultry, which cause great economic losses to the poultry industry. In the present study, we developed a bivalent vaccine containing antigens of inactivated ND and reassortant HPAI H5N1 viruses as a candidate poultry vaccine, and we evaluated its immunogenicity and protective efficacy in specific pathogen-free chickens. The 6∶2 reassortant H5N1 vaccine strain containing the surface genes of the A/Chicken/Korea/ES/2003(H5N1) virus was successfully generated by reverse genetics. A polybasic cleavage site of the hemagglutinin segment was replaced by a monobasic cleavage site. We characterized the reverse genetics-derived reassortant HPAI H5N1 clade 2.5 vaccine strain by evaluating its growth kinetics in eggs, minimum effective dose in chickens, and cross-clade immunogenicity against HPAI clade 1 and 2. The bivalent vaccine was prepared by emulsifying inactivated ND (La Sota strain) and reassortant HPAI viruses with Montanide ISA 70 adjuvant. A single immunization with this vaccine induced high levels of hemagglutination-inhibiting antibody titers and protected chickens against a lethal challenge with the wild-type HPAI and ND viruses. Our results demonstrate that the bivalent, inactivated vaccine developed in this study is a promising approach for the control of both HPAI H5N1 and ND viral infections.