Detection, Isolation, and Continuous Production of Cytopathic Retroviruses (HTLV-III) from Patients with AIDS and Pre-AIDS

Abstract

A cell system was developed for the reproducible detection of human T-lymphotropic retroviruses (HTLV family) from patients with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) or with signs or symptoms that frequently precede AIDS (pre-AIDS). The cells are specific clones from a permissive human neoplastic T-cell line. Some of the clones permanently grow and continuously produce large amounts of virus after infection with cytopathic (HTLV-III) variants of these viruses. One cytopathic effect of HTLV-III in this system is the arrangement of multiple nuclei in a characteristic ring formation in giant cells of the infected T-cell population. These structures can be used as an indicator to detect HTLV-III in clinical specimens. This system opens the way to the routine detection of HTLV-III and related cytopathic variants of HTLV in patients with AIDS or pre-AIDS and in healthy carriers, and it provides large amounts of virus for detailed molecular and immunological analyses.

Regulation of T cell autocrine growth. T4+ cells become refractory to interleukin 2.

“…Although both HTLV-I/II (34,35) and HTLV-III (36,37) can enter non-T4 + cells and integrate as proviral DNA, the pathologic effects of both types of viruses result primarily from their infection of T4 ÷ cells. HTLV-I, the etiologic agent of adult T cell leukemia (ATL) (38,39), transforms T4 + cells preferentially.…”

Rapid selection for an N-linked oligosaccharide by monoclonal antibodies directed against the V3 loop of human immunodeficiency virus type 1

“…The CD4 + cell lines C8166 (Salahuddin et al, 1983), H9 (Popovic et al, 1984), MT2 and MT4 (Harada et al, 1985) were cultured in growth medium at 37 °C in 5% CO,~. Growth medium was RPMI 1640 supplemented with 10 % fetal calf serum and antibiotics.…”

Significance of herpesvirus immediate early gene expression in cellular immunity to cytomegalovirus infection

“…Second-passage mouse embryo fibroblasts (MEF) were used as a source of target cells for the 5lCr-release assay. To determine the negative or positive reference frequencies, noninfected MEF were used either in the absence of lectin or with addition of 20 jJ.g ml- 1 Con A, respectively. Infected target cells after selective expression of immediate early genes (IE-MEF) served to determine the frequency of IL-CTLp specific for the immediate early antigen (L YDIEA) of MCMV.…”