Monoclonal antibodies specific for wild mouse neurotropic retrovirus: detection of comparable levels of virus replication in mouse strains susceptible and resistant to paralytic disease.

We used AKR/J mice to produce monoclonal antibodies specific for a neurotropic ecotropic (WM-E) virus initially isolated from wild mice. The rationale for this approach involved the observation that these mice were immunologically hyporesponsive to endogenous ecotropic virus (Akv) but fully responsive to type-specific determinants of WM-E. Hybridoma cell lines derived from mice immunized with both denatured and viable virus produced antibodies with specificity for three viral membrane-associated polypeptides, gp70, p15(E), and p15gag. Epitopes specific for WM-E virus were detected in each of these polypeptides. Cross-reactivity with Friend ecotropic virus (Friend murine leukemia virus) was observed with some gp70- and p15gag-specific antibodies, but no reactivity with endogenous Akv ecotropic virus was seen. The majority of these antibodies did not react with either xenotropic or mink cell focus-forming viruses. Two WM-E-specific anti-gp70 antibodies reacting with different determinants had virus-neutralizing activity in the absence of complement, suggesting that the respective epitopes may participate in receptor binding or virus penetration events. We used these monoclonal antibodies in initial studies to examine the replication of WM-E virus in neonatally inoculated AKR/J mice which are fully resistant to the paralytic disease induced by this virus. Since these mice express high levels of endogenous ecotropic virus, standard assays for ecotropic virus cannot be used to study this question. We present evidence that the resistance to disease does not involve a resistance to virus replication, since these mice expressed levels of viremia and virus replication in spleen and lumbar spinal cord comparable to susceptible NFS/N mice at a time when the latter began to manifest clinical signs of lower-motor-neuron pathology.