1Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, The University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran, P.O Box: 14155-6433
2Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Werribee, Victoria-3030, Australia
3Faculty of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
4Faculty of Veterinary Sciences, The University of Queensland, Australia
Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Werribee, Victoria-3030, Australia
*Corresponding author. Email: skordafshari@student.unimelb.edu.au
Echinococcus granulosus is considered as a significant parasitic infection with worldwide distribution. The present study was aimed to express the diagnostic antigen EpC1 in a recombinant system and set up an indirect ELISA for diagnosis of infected canines. Hydatid cysts were collected from liver and lungs of naturally infected sheep from slaughter houses and cDNA was synthesized from the protoscoleces. The EpC1 was expressed as recombinant protein in E. coli using pET28a as expression vector and purified by His-tag affinity chromatography. Expression of recombinant EpC1 was confirmed using SDS-PAGE followed by Western immunoblotting using T7-Tag monoclonal antibody and sera from naturally infected and experimentally challenged dogs. The diagnostic potential of the recombinant EpC1 was assessed against 22 dog sera using indirect ELISA. The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative prediction values of the ELISA test were calculated as 100%, 93.3%, 88.8% and 100%, respectively. Recombinant EpC1 showed promising results for the diagnosis of echinococcosis in dogs
Dogs, Echinococcus granulosus, ELISA, Recombinant protein, EpC1
