Evaluation of immune response of BALB/c mice against lyophilized form of Neospora caninum

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of lyophilization on which strain in comparison with acute strain in the development of immune response in BALB/c mice. To this end, 40 BALB/c mice were divided into 5 groups each of 8 heads. The first group: NC1 (acute strain), the second group: lyophilized NC1 (acute strain), the third group: NCR (attenuated strain), the fourth group: lyophilized NCR (attenuated strain), and the fifth group: control. Three weeks after induction of vaccines, blood sampling was performed for ELISA and interferon-gamma tests. The results showed that the hemorrhagic immune system performed well (P <0.05, OR (CI95%)), and all four immunosuppressed groups had a significant difference in humoral immune response compared to the control group. An important result was the interferon test, which revealed that the lyophilized form in the acute strain had no significant difference in the level of interferon gamma compared to the control group, while lyophilized attenuated strain also had a significant difference between the levels of IFN-γ compared to the control (P <0.05, OR (CI95%)). This study showed that the lyophilized attenuated strain N.caninum is also able to produce a humoral and cell mediated immune and can be considered as an appropriate candidate for further studies on vaccine production.