VSV

Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), which belongs to the Vesiculovirus genus of the family Rhabdoviridae, is a well studied livestock pathogen and prototypic non-segmented, negative-sense RNA virus. Although VSV is responsible for causing economically significant outbreaks of vesicular stomatitis in cattle, horses, and swine, the virus also represents a valuable research tool for molecular biologists and virologists. Many properties of VSV make it a valuable tool for molecular virology research—such as its ability to express heterologous glycoproteins and replicate to high titers—also make it an excellent vaccine platform. In addition, the apparent seroprevalence of VSV antibodies is generally low within the human population, so there is little pre-existing immunity to the vector, and because the VSV replication cycle takes place exclusively in the cytoplasm of host cells, there is no potential for viral sequences to integrate into the host genome. As a result, recombinant VSV has emerged as a viable vaccine vector, and many recombinant VSV-based vaccines have demonstrated safety and immunogenicity in multiple pre-clinical and clinical trials.