Although desirable for safety reasons, the host range restrictions of modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) make it less applicable for general use. Propagation in primary chicken embryo fibroblasts (CEF) requires particular cell culture experience and has no pre-established record of tissue culture reproducibility. We investigated a variety of established cell lines for productive virus growth and recombinant gene expression. Baby hamster kidney cells (BHK), a well-characterized, easily maintained cell line, supported MVA growth and as proficient expression of the E. coli lacZ reporter gene as the highly efficient CEF, whereas other cell lines were non-permissive or allowed only very limited MVA replication. Importantly, no virus production occurred in patient-derived infected primary human cells. These results emphasize the safety and now improved accessibility of MVA for the development of expression vectors and live recombinant vaccines.
Live attenuated viruses used as vaccines are known for their efficacy to elicit protective immunity against viral diseases. More recently, with an increasing number of tumor-associated antigens (TAA) being identified and molecularly cloned (1) the development of vaccines for cancer immunotherapy has gained considerable interest. In particular, live recombinant viral vectors seem to be appropriate delivery systems for efficient presentation of TAA to the immune system. The promise of viral vectors is likely to be founded on their capacity for high-level expression of target genes combined with their intrinsic property to activate immunological control systems mimicking an infection with a disease causing agent.
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