PSVIII-2 Antibody yield for polyclonal egg yolk antibody (IgY) production in laying hens

Abstract

Abstract Antibody production in egg yolks of immunized laying hens is an alternative to conventional mammalian production. Antibody yield peak and duration have not been described for immunoglobulin Y technology using Freund’s incomplete adjuvant (FIA) and C-phosphate-guanosine oligodeoxynucleotides (CpG-ODN) without the inclusion of Freund’s complete adjuvant for enhancing the immune response to an interleukin-10 (IL-10) peptide. This study sought to describe the antibody titer production for an 8 amino acid sequence from the surface of the bovine IL-10 protein (VMPQAENG) as the antigen emulsified with CpG-ODN and FIA in phosphate buffered saline (PBS). 60 hens were assigned to receive the complete vaccine (Peptide), 20 received the vaccine without the IL-10 peptide (Control), and 8 received a PBS injection (Blank). Hens were immunized with 0.25 mL in 4 locations, each breast and each thigh on days 1, 15 and 29. The complete vaccine delivered 0.6 mg IL-10 peptide, 8 µg CpG-ODN, and 0.33 mL FIA per hen on each vaccination day. Eggs were collected regularly until 175 days after the first immunization and the anti IL-10 peptide activities of the yolk were determined by ELISA. Egg titers by treatment were analyzed with a repeated measures ANOVA in SAS. The supplementation of FIA with CpG-ODN produced high titers, of over 100 µg of antibody per mL of yolk (µg Ab/mL yolk), around day 33 through day 76, with a slow decline through day 175 when average titers remained above 40 µg Ab/mL yolk. Peptide egg titers were significantly higher than Blank or Control titers from day 31 though day 175 (P < 0.0001). Titers recovered from Marcq et al. (2015) with similar methods were 1.5 to 7 times lower than these results over the same number of days.