Production and diagnostic application of monoclonal antibodies against infectious bursal disease virus

Infectious bursal disease (IBD) caused by infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) is a highly contagious viral disease in chicken. It causes heavy economic loss by immune suppression and high mortality. The IBDV, designated Avibirnavirus in the Family Birnaviridae, has a double-stranded RNA genome formed by two segments, segment A and segment B. Segment A encodes a 108 KDa polypeptide that is self-cleaved to produce pVP2, VP3 and VP4, and later pVP2 is cleaved to VP2. The VP2 contains the antigenic regions responsible for elicitation of neutralizing antibodies and VP3 is a major immunogenic protein of IBDV. In this study, monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) specific for IBDV were produced and characterized. All 15 MAbs were specific for IBDV and did not react with other viruses used in this study. The protein specificity of MAbs was determined by comparing the reactivity patterns of each MAb with IBDV VP2 and VP234 recombinant baculoviruses and Western blot analysis. As a result, 7 MAbs (1F5, 2C8, 2F4, 3C7, 4C3, 6F11, 6G5) and 5 MAbs (2A4, 2G2, 3F5, 3G2, 4F10) were specific for VP2 and VP3, respectively. The protein specificity of 3 MAbs (2B8, 3F7, 3F8) were not determined. Five (2C8, 2F4, 4C3, 6F11, 6G5) of the VP2-specific MAbs had a neutralizing activity against IBDV. Some MAbs reacted with IBDV-infected bursa of Fabricius by indirect fluorescence antibody (IFA) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) assay. The MAbs produced in this study would be used for diagnostic reagents for the detection of IBDV infection.