Bridging Gaps in Antibody Responses and Animal Welfare: Assessing Blood Collection Methods and Vaginal Immunity in Mice Immunized with Intranasal Gonococcal Vaccines

TL;DR

This study compares blood collection methods in mice to assess vaccine efficacy and finds that saphenous vein sampling may be more reliable and ethical than retro-orbital methods.

Contribution

The study introduces saphenous vein sampling as a viable alternative to retro-orbital sampling for reliable antibody response assessment in vaccine research.

Findings

Saphenous vein sampling showed higher functional antibody activity compared to retro-orbital sampling.

Antibodies from saphenous vein samples restored more lysozyme hydrolytic activity than retro-orbital samples.

SV sampling reduces animal stress and trauma, improving welfare without compromising immunological data.

Abstract

Assessing antibody titers and functional responses is essential for evaluating vaccine efficacy, yet the impact of blood collection methods on these immunological assessments remains unclear. Retro-orbital (RO) blood collection is commonly used but significant complications can occur. Increasingly, investigators have adopted alternative blood collection approaches, such as saphenous vein (SV) sampling to improve laboratory animal welfare. This study compared RO and SV sampling in the development of a Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Ng) vaccine, evaluating Adhesin Complex Protein (ACP) and multiple transferable resistance (Mtr) E protein (MtrE) as antigen candidates. Epitope mapping revealed that ACP and MtrE possess multiple, highly accessible B-cell and T-cell epitope clusters, reinforcing their immunological potential. Following intranasal immunization with rACP, rACP+CpG, and rMtrE+CpG, we assessed the specificity, magnitude, kinetics, and functional quality of immune responses elicited by the immunization regimens. Out of 45 comparisons, only eight significant differences were detected in antibody titers, while the human serum bactericidal assays revealed no differences between RO and SV in antigen-immunized groups. However, antibodies elicited by rACP alone or ACP+CpG in SV samples restored 30.05% and 75.2% of human lysozyme hydrolytic activity compared to 19.3 and 59.9 % in RO, respectively suggesting that SV sampling may be more reliable for assessing functional antibody responses.

Beyond its immunological advantages, SV sampling reduces stress, minimizes ocular trauma, and improves animal welfare, making it a viable alternative to RO collection. Given its widespread use in vaccine research, standardizing SV sampling could improve data reliability, ethical compliance, and translational relevance in preclinical studies.

Figures