Short- and long-term immune responses of CD-1 outbred mice to the scrub typhus DNA vaccine candidate: p47Kp.

Orientia tsutsugamushi is an obligate intracellular bacterium that is the causative agent of scrub typhus. To develop an effective vaccine to prevent or ameliorate scrub typhus, knowledge of the protective immune response to O. tsutsugamushi needs to be ascertained. Our laboratory has demonstrated that the DNA vaccine vector pVR1012 carrying the O. tsutsugamushi Karp strain 47-kDa protein gene (p47Kp) consistently provides outbred mice protection against homologous challenge.