Cohorts of 6–8 week old female BALB/c mice were obtained from Charles River Laboratories (St. Constant, QC). All experiments were conducted in accordance with the ethical guidelines by the University of Saskatchewan and the Canadian Council for Animal Care. The mice (n = 12 per group) were given a single immunization by subcutaneous injection on the back with formulations containing 10 μg of PCEP, 20 μg of IDR 1002, 10 μg CpG ODN 10101 as SOL, MP or AQ formulations, with Quadracel®

(Sanofi-Pasteur) diluted to 1 μg of PTd per animal and one group received only phosphate buffered saline pH 7.4 (PBS). The mice were immunized on day 1 and serum was separated from blood collected by tail vein puncture on days 14 and 28 after immunization. Venetoclax ic50 GSK126 mouse B. pertussis Tohoma-1 strain were streaked onto charcoal agar plates supplemented with 10% sheep blood (CBA) and incubated at 37 °C for 48 h to obtain single colonies. A few single colonies were subsequently spread onto fresh CBA plates and incubated as above. After 48 h, plates were overlaid with 300 μl of 1% casamino acids, bacteria were scraped off into the casamino acid solution and 200 μl of the suspension was used to inoculate fresh CBA plates. These were incubated and harvested as described above and transferred into 2 ml of

SS medium and quantified using a spectrophotometer. Bacterial concentration was adjusted to 5 × 106/20 μl and administered intranasally. After 2 h, 2 animals from each group were humanely euthanized and their lungs were collected and homogenized in 1 ml of SS

medium and 10-fold dilutions were plated on CBA agar plates to determine the number of viable bacteria. Lungs from 5 mice per group were collected at days 3 and 7 after challenge and processed as described above. The lung homogenates were stored in 0.1 mg/ml of PMSF at −20 °C and used to examine MCP-1, TNF-α, IL-12p40, and IFN-γ cytokine production and to evaluate total IgG and IgA antigen-specific antibody responses. Antigen specific total IgG, IgG1, IgG2a and IgA immune responses were determined by end-point ELISA using methods previously described [14]. Briefly, 100 μl of pertussis toxin (PT, Sigma–Aldrich Inc., CA, USA; 0.25 μg/ml) Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase in carbonate coating buffer (15 mM Na2CO3, 35 mM NaHCO3, pH 9.6) was added to each well. Wells were washed 6 times with Tris-buffered saline pH 7.3 (TBS) containing 0.05% TWEEN™ 20 (TBS-T). Diluted mouse serum samples (for IgG1 and IgG2a) or lung homogenates (IgG and IgA) were added to the wells at 100 μl/well and incubated for 1 h at room temperature. Wells were washed again with TBS-T and biotinylated goat-anti mouse IgG, IgG1, IgG2a, and IgA antibodies (Caltag Laboratories, CA, USA) were added to wells (1/5000) at 100 μl/well and incubated for 1 h at room temperature.