Vaccination is an important strategy to prevent infectious diseases. However, low antigen yield of vaccine producing strains may lead to high cost of vaccines, low antigen production and vaccine failure. In recent years, many efforts have been made to improve the antigen yield of many vaccines. This mini-review summarizes various methods for increasing the antigen yield for vaccine production, including genetic modification of viruses, improvement of the adaptation of viruses to cells, and optimization of antigen expression systems and manufacturing procedures. Furthermore, we discuss the advantages and the problems of current strategies, as well as indicate the perspectives.

Classical swine fever (CSF), caused by classical swine fever virus (CSFV), is a devastating viral disease in swine, leading to significant economic losses to the pig husbandry. C-strain is one of the best modified live vaccines against CSF. The vaccine is highly safe and efficacious and can provide rapid and complete protection against essentially all genotypes of CSFV. Co-infections of pigs with CSFV and porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) occur frequently in the field, making it difficult to control the associated diseases. Here, a recombinant C-strain rHCLV-Cap expressing the Cap protein of PCV2 was constructed and evaluated in vitro and in vivo. The recombinant had comparable phenotypes to C-strain in cell cultures and rabbits. At ten days post-immunization, anti-E2, but not anti-Cap, antibodies were detected in the rabbits inoculated with the recombinant virus. Our study warrants further work to construct C-strain-based bivalent vaccines.