Enhanced production of enveloped viruses in BST-2-deficient cell lines

5 years ago

Enhanced production of enveloped viruses in BST-2-deficient cell lines

Ngoc Q. Giao, Se-Ho Park, Soohwan Oh, Eunbi Yi, Jinsoo Oh

Despite all the advantages that cell-cultured influenza vaccines have over egg-based influenza vaccines, the inferior productivity of cell-culture systems is a major drawback that must be addressed. BST-2 (tetherin) is a host restriction factor which inhibits budding-out of various enveloped viruses from infected host cells. We developed BST-2-deficient MDCK and Vero cell lines to increase influenza virus release in cell culture. BST-2 gene knock-out resulted in increased release of viral particles into the culture medium, by at least 2-fold and up to 50-fold compared to release from wild-type counterpart cells depending on cell line and virus type. The effect was not influenza virus/MDCK/Vero-specific, but was also present in a broad range of host cells and virus families; we observed similar results in murine, human, canine, and monkey cell lines with viruses including MHV-68 (Herpesviridae), influenza A virus (Orthomyxoviridae), porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (Coronaviridae), and vaccinia virus (Poxviridae). Our results suggest that the elimination of BST-2 expression in virus-producing cell lines can enhance the production of viral vaccines. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2017;9999: 1–9. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Despite all the advantages that cell-cultured influenza vaccines have over egg-based influenza vaccines, the inferior productivity of cell-culture systems is a major drawback that must be addressed. Yi and coworkers made a breakthrough in this study to increase virus production by removing a host restriction factor BST-2. Robust increase of virus production using this method may encourage the development of new vaccines against viral diseases which do not currently have effective vaccine-producing systems.

Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi

DOI: 10.1002/bit.26338