Molecular characterization of an apoptotic strain of Newcastle disease virus isolated from an outbreak in India.

Newcastle disease (ND) is a highly contagious disease of poultry. The ND virus (NDV) encodes an error-prone RNA-dependent RNA polymerase which can cause high mutation rate leading to the emergence of its new antigenic variants. Antigenic difference of NDV strains may result in massive outbreak in vaccinated and unvaccinated poultry flocks around the globe. Apart from its pathogenic potential NDV has been explored as an oncolytic agent for a broad range of human cancers. In the present study, we isolated a novel NDV strain from an outbreak in chicken flock from the eastern part of India. Molecular characterization showed the NDV strain to be virulent in nature. The complete genome sequence analysis of the newly isolated strains belongs to genotype XIII. Moreover, the newly isolated strain of NDV showed positive results in various apoptotic assays in human breast cancer cells, MCF-7. The study will be useful to explore the possibility of using a newly isolated strain of NDV for virotherapy.