Abstract: The standard rabies vaccines recommended by WHO include Essen regimen, the Thai Red Cross two-site ID regimen and the eight-site ID regimen, and so on. The present schedules of rabies vaccine are all laborious and time consuming. We developed a new rabies vaccine with liposome as adjuvant(LipoRabV) and found that liposome could facilitate the inactivated rabies vaccine(RabV) to induce the more vigorous production of rabies virus neutralizing antibody(RVNA) in BALB/c mice and beagles. We established preliminary pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis schedules for LipoRabV. LipoRabV(0/14) could elicit similar RVNA level as RabV(0/7/28) by pre-exposure prophylaxis schedules in mice and beagles. LipoRabV(0/3/14) could elicit higher RVNA level vs. RabV(0/3/7/14/28) in BALB/c. The data indicate that the three-shot liposome-enhanced rabies vaccine could achieve a higher protection rate(survival rate 56.2%) by post-exposure prophylaxis compared with that of the RabV group(survival rate 40.6%) in mice. The data also indicate that the three-inoculation liposome-enhanced rabies vaccine could achieve a survival rate of 80.0% vs. RabV(70.0%) by post-exposure prophylaxis in beagles. The results show that the immunization schedule for LipoRabV could be preliminarily determined at 0 and 14 d for pre-exposure prophylaxis and at 0, 3 and 14 d for post-exposure prophylaxis.

Key words: Rabies vaccine, Adjuvant, Neutralizing antibody, Liposome