An optimized caries model ofin rats and its application for evaluating prophylactic vaccines.

Abstract

Dental caries is a prevalent oral disease that mainly results from. Susceptibility todecreased rapidly after weaning in a well-known rat model. However, owing to the lack of time to establish protective immunity ahead of challenge, the weaning rat model is suboptimal for assessing prophylactic vaccines againstinfection. In this study, we found that, in adult rats,cultured under air-restricted conditions showed dramatically increased colonization efficacy and accelerated development of dental caries compared with those cultured under air-unrestricted conditions. We propose thatcultured under air-restricted conditions can be used to develop an optimal caries model, especially for the evaluation of prophylactic efficacy against. Therefore, we used the anti-caries vaccine, KFD2-rPAc, to reevaluate the protection against the challenge of. In immunized rats, rPAc-specific protective antibodies were robustly elicited by KFD2-rPAc before the challenge. In addition to inhibiting the initial and long-term colonization of, KFD2-rPAc immunization showed an 83% inhibitory efficacy against the development of caries, similar to that previously evaluated in a weaning rat model. These results demonstrate that culturing under air-restricted conditions can promoteinfection in adult rats, thereby helping establish a rat infection model to evaluate the prophylactic efficacy of vaccines and anti-caries drugs.