Assessment of replication of bovine herpesvirus type 4 in human glioblastoma and breast cancer cells as a potential oncolytic virus.

Oncolytic viruses have been extensively used in cancer treatment due to their tropism, selective replication only in tumor cells, and possible synergic interaction with other therapeutics. Different researchers have demonstrated that bovine herpesvirus 4 (BoHV-4), a member of the gammaherpesviridae family, has oncolytic potential in some human-origin cancer cell lines like glioma through the selective replication strategy. Using four apoptosis detection methods, namely MTT, LDH, TUNEL, and Annexin V assays, we evaluated the apoptotic effect of BoHV-4 Movar33/63 reference strain along with a recombinant BoHV-4 expressing EGFP in U87 MG cells (human glioblastoma cell line), MDA MB-231 (human breast cancer cell line), and MCF10a (non-tumorigenic human mammary epithelial cell line). Our findings indicate that this virus can replicate and induce apoptosis in these cell lines and hinder in vitro proliferation in a dose-dependent manner. In conclusion, BoHV-4 has in vitro potential as a novel oncolytic virus in human cancer therapy. However, its replication potential in the MCF10a cells as a non-tumorigenic human mammary epithelial cell line is a concern in using this virus in cancer therapy, at least against human mammary tumors. Further studies must therefore be conducted to examine the specific apoptotic pathways induced by this virus to move on to further experiments.

Lack of genetic diversity in Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses in Turkey: assessment of present and future patterns of disease.

Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is a tick-borne zoonosis which is common in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Balkan Peninsula. CCHF has been reported in Turkey with high frequency since 2002. The aim of the present study was to investigate the genetic diversity and genetic relationship between CCHF virus (CCHFV) isolates derived from infected patients over a 2-year period (2009 and 2010) in several provinces of Turkey. Serum samples (n = 48) were selected from CCHFV RNA positive patients and subjected to sequence analysis of the gene regions encoding the S (48 samples) and M (14 samples) segments. The nucleotide sequence alignments showed that the nucleic acid relatedness of CCHFV isolates ranged from 95.7% to 100% and from 93.7% to 100% for S and M segments, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis of both segment sequences revealed that CCHFV isolates circulating in Turkey belonged to the European lineage I and were closely related to the viruses found in the Eastern European-Russian and Balkan Peninsula. The M gene segment-based phylogenetic analysis suggested that 2/14 CCHFV isolates (KYSR3159/09 and YZGT714/10) had additional genetic variations. The results of the present study confirmed that the CCHFV isolates present in Turkey associated with human disease had high genetic homology in S segment, but some variability in the M segment of the RNA.