Patients with the most common and aggressive form of high-grade glioma, glioblastoma multiforme, have poor prognosis and few treatment options. In 2 immunocompetent mouse brain tumor models (CT26-BALB/c and Tu-2449-B6C3F1), we showed that a nonlytic retroviral replicating vector (Toca 511) stably delivers an optimized cytosine deaminase prodrug activating gene to the tumor lesion and leads to long-term survival after treatment with 5-fluorocytosine (5-FC). Survival benefit is dose dependent for both vector and 5-FC, and as few as 4 cycles of 5-FC dosing after Toca 511 therapy provides significant survival advantage. In the virally permissive CT26-BALB/c model, spread of Toca 511 to other tissues, particularly lymphoid tissues, is detectable by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) over a wide range of levels. In the Tu-2449-B6C3F1 model, Toca 511 PCR signal in nontumor tissues is much lower, spread is not always observed, and when observed, is mainly detected in lymphoid tissues at low levels. The difference in vector genome spread correlates with a more effective antiviral restriction element, APOBEC3, present in the B6C3F1 mice. Despite these differences, neither strain showed signs of treatment-related toxicity. These data support the concept that, in immunocompetent animals, a replicating retroviral vector carrying a prodrug activating gene (Toca 511) can spread through a tumor mass, leading to selective elimination of the tumor after prodrug administration, without local or systemic pathology. This concept is under investigation in an ongoing phase I/II clinical trial of Toca 511 in combination with 5-FC in patients with recurrent high-grade glioma ( NCT01156584).

We have identified a novel, multiple spliced, subgenomic mRNA species in MMTV producing cells of different origin containing an open reading frame encoding a 39-kDa Rev-like protein, Rem (regulator of expression of MMTV). An EGFP-Rem fusion protein is shown to be predominantly in the nucleolus. Further leptomycin B inhibits the nuclear export of nonspliced MMTV transcripts, implicating Rem in nuclear export by the Crm1 pathway in MMTV. Rem is thus reminiscent of the Rec protein from the related endogenous human retrovirus, HERV-K.

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Based on integration site preferences, retroviruses can be placed into three groups. Viruses that comprise the first group, murine leukemia virus and foamy virus, integrate preferentially near transcription start sites. The second group, notably human immunodeficiency virus and simian immunodeficiency virus, preferentially targets transcription units. Avian sarcoma-leukosis virus (ASLV) and human T-cell leukemia virus (HTLV), forming the third group, show little preference for any genomic feature. We have previously shown that some human cells sustain mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV) infection; therefore, we infected a susceptible human breast cell line, Hs578T, and, without introducing a species-specific bias, compared the MMTV integration profile to those of other retroviruses. Additionally, we infected a mouse cell line, NMuMG, and thus we could compare MMTV integration site selection in human and mouse cells. In total, we examined 468 unique MMTV integration sites. Irrespective of whether human or mouse cells were infected, no integration bias favoring transcription start sites was detected, a profile that is reminiscent of that of ASLV and HTLV. However, in contrast to ASLV and HTLV, not even a modest tendency in favor of integration within genes was observed. Similarly, repetitive sequences and genes that are frequently tagged by MMTV in mammary tumors were not preferentially targeted in cell culture either in mouse or in human cells; hence, we conclude that MMTV displays the most random dispersion of integration sites among retroviruses determined so far.