• Zheng Jia, Xiaohong Wu, Ling Wang, Xiuling Li, Xinxian Dai, Mifang Liang, Shouchun Cao, Yan Kong, Jingjing Liu, Yuhua Li, and Junzhi Wang.
• National Institutes for Food and Drug Control, Beijing 100050, PR China.
• Biologicals. 2017 Mar 1; 46: 92-98.

AbstractSevere fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is caused by a phlebovirus of the Bunyaviridae family, which is designated as SFTS virus (SFTSV). To our knowledge, no efficient SFTSV vaccine exists. Here, we report the identification of a standard virus strain for the eight major SFTSV strains circulating in China for use in evaluating the SFTSV vaccine. Rabbits were immunized with the SFTSV strains and the cross-neutralization capacities of SFTSV anti-sera were determined in microculture cytopathic effect (CPE)-inhibition assays. The mean cross-neutralization capacity of the eight SFTSV anti-sera ranged from 62.4 to 142.6%, compared to autologous strains. The HB29 strain demonstrated strong cross-reactivity with heterologous antibodies, and 33 serum samples from SFTS patients efficiently neutralized HB29, suggesting its broad cross-reactivity. In addition, HB29 demonstrated good replication in Vero and MRC-5 cells (8.0 and 6.0 lg 50% cell culture-infectious dose/mL, respectively) and significant CPE, which satisfied the requirements for a standard virus strain. The HB29 isolate was proven identical to the reported HB29 strain by DNA sequencing, and showed high homology in the S segments with other SFTSV strains (94.8-99.7%). Our results suggest that HB29 may be the best candidate standard strain for use in SFTS vaccine development in China.Copyright © 2017 International Alliance for Biological Standardization. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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