T-cell Immune Response Assessment As a Complement to Serology and Intranasal Protection Assays in Determining the Protective Immunity Induced by Acellular Pertussis Vaccines in Mice

The relative value of antibodies and/or T-cell immune responses to Bordetella pertussis antigens in the immunity induced by acellular pertussis (aP) vaccines is still an open issue, probably due to the incomplete knowledge on the mechanisms of protective immunity to pertussis. The relevance of T-cell immune responses in protection from pertussis has been demonstrated in murine and human models of infection; thus, in this study, the ability of different vaccine preparations of three component (pertussis toxin, filamentous hemagglutinin, and pertactin) aP vaccines to induce T-cell responses was investigated in mice. All vaccine preparations examined passed the immunogenicity control test, based on antibody titer assessment, according to European Pharmacopoeia standards, and protected mice from B. pertussis intranasal challenge, but not all preparations were able to prime T cells to pertussis toxin, the specific B. pertussis antigen. In particular, one vaccine preparation was unable to induce proliferation and gamma interferon (IFN-gamma) production while the other two gave borderline results. The evaluation of T-cell responses to pertussis toxin antigen may provide information on the protective immunity induced by aP vaccines in animal models. Considering the critical role of the axis interleukin-12-IFN-gamma for protection from pertussis, our results suggest that testing the induction of a key protective cytokine such as IFN-gamma could be an additional tool for the evaluation of the immune response induced by aP vaccines.