Chemokine CCL20 plasmid improves protective efficacy of the Montanide ISA™ 206 adjuvanted foot-and-mouth disease vaccine in mice model

•Injection of chemokine CCL20 plasmid ahead of the immunization with inactivated FMDV vaccine improved humoral immunity.•CCL20 plasmid enhanced FMDV-specific cell mediated immunity and biased immune responses toward Th1 type.•CCL20 adjuvanted FMDV vaccine provided complete protection against the lethal homologous virus challenge in mice model. This study aimed to investigate the chemokine CCL20, a macrophage inflammatory protein-3 alpha, for adjuvant potential in inactivated foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) vaccine. Groups of mice were injected intramuscularly with either murine CCL20 DNA or CCL20 protein two days ahead of the immunization with Montanide ISA206 adjuvanted inactivated FMD vaccine and humoral and cellular immune responses were measured in post-vaccinal sera. We demonstrated that the mice immunized with CCL20 plasmid plus FMD vaccine showed earlier and significantly (p