Kinetics of the development of protective immunity in mice vaccinated with a live attenuated retrovirus

Vaccination of mice with a live attenuated vaccine virus induces potent protection against subsequent challenge with pathogenic Friend retroviral complex. The kinetic studies presented here demonstrate protection from acute splenomegaly as early as 1 week postvaccination. At this time point virus-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) were demonstrable in direct chromium release assays. However, during the first 2 weeks after vaccination protection was incomplete since the mice were not protected against establishment of low-level persistent infections in the spleen. By 3 weeks postvaccination the animals were protected against the establishment of persistent virus as well as acute splenomegaly. The timing of this complete protection correlated with the presence of both virus-neutralizing antibodies and primed CTL in the immunized mice. Within 3 days of virus challenge, vaccinated mice showed high levels of activated B cells and CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells, indicating an efficient priming of all lymphocyte subsets. Despite very limited replication of the vaccine virus, the protective effect was long lived and was still present 6 months after immunization.