Biologists Find Basis for Latent Cytomegalovirus Infection

Researchers have developed a laboratory system for studying cytomegalovirus (CMV) as a latent infection in freshly collected bone marrow cells. Their findings to date were published November 27, 2002, in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Viral genomes can be found in CD14+ monocytes and CD34+ progenitor cells, but the primary reservoir for latent cytomegalovirus is unknown. Investigators from Princeton University (Princeton, NJ, USA) analyzed human hematopoietic subpopulations infected in vitro with a recombinant form of CMV that expressed a green fluorescent protein marker gene. They found that although many hematopoietic cell subsets were infected in vitro, CD14+ monocytes and various CD34+ subpopulations were infected with the greatest efficiency.

Viral DNA sequences were maintained in infected CD34+ cells for more than 20 days in culture, and virus replication could be reactivated by co-culture with human fibroblasts. The pattern of viral gene expression during the latent phase was distinct from that observed during productive or nonproductive infections.

Knowing what genes enable the virus to lie dormant and then reactivate could give pharmaceutical companies targets for designing drugs that disrupt those mechanisms. "So you could dream that some day in the future we could clear the virus from a person and not just treat the symptoms that occur when the virus re-emerges,” said senior author Dr. Thomas Shenk, professor of molecular biology at Princeton.



Related Links:
Princeton University