Virus carrier state suppresses tumorigenicity of tumor cells in athymic (nude) mice.

Nude mice injected subcutaneously with normal uninfected BHK 21 cells or HeLa cells regularly develop large, rapidly-growing tumours at the subcutaneous site of inoculation. However, these same tumour cell lines when persistently infected with VSV or other enveloped RNA viruses are either rejected or form small nodules in nude mice. This rejection phenomenon probably involves some type of immunocyte since heavily-irradiated nude mice (500 rads) cannot reject persistently infected cells but develop large, rapidly-growing tumours which shed virus and defective interfering virus (DI) and which do not exhibit the lymphocytic infiltration observed in the nodules of unirradiated mice given persistently infected cells. Finally, it was possible to select a subline of BHK 21-VSV carrier cells which regularly produces large rapidly-growing tumours in normal unirradiated nude mice, although all these carrier cells express virus antigen and shed large amounts of mature infectious virus and DI both in vivo and in vitro.