Fig. 4.
Anti-HBsAg antibody and cellular immune responses in BALB/c mice immunized with ASPPR and HBsAg. BALB/c mice were intramuscularly immunized with 1 μg of recombinant HBsAg and 25 μg of recombinant ASPPR and boosted once 3 weeks later. Mice were immunized with HBsAg plus Ov-ASP-1, HBsAg plus Alum, HBsAg alone, or PBS alone were used as the control. Upper: antibody levels in mouse sera. Sera were collected on the third week after the final immunization, and anti-HBsAg-specific antibody IgG (Fig. 4A), IgG1 (Fig. 4B), and IgG2a (Fig. 4C) were measured by ELISA. Antibody titers are expressed as geometric mean ± SD. Lower: ELISPOT Assay. Splenocytes from the immunized mice were isolated and stimulated with 10 μg/ml of the peptide specific to HBsAg, S28–39IPQSLDSWWTSL, to observe specific cellular immune response by counting spots on the plate of IFNγ (Fig. 4D) and IL-4 (Fig. 4E). The representative data of one of six mice is presented.