Effect of human reovirus strain R-92 on tumor cell lines

Background. Among all the new methods and approaches, virotherapy with oncolytic viruses, both in combination with immunotherapy and without it, shows high efficiency in various phases of clinical trials and good tolerance by patients.Aim. To study the sensitivity of some immortalized cancer cell lines to the R-92 strain of human reovirus with cell characteristics at the ultrastructural level.Materials and methods. The study was carried out on cell lines of HeLa, A549, U87MG. Cells were planted in an amount of 15 thousand per well of a 96-well plate and after adhesion, the virus was inoculated by adding a medium containing virus particles in 4 tenfold dilutions (approximately 10 9 –106 particles per ml). Next, the cells were cultured for 24 h, after which the number of living cells in the wells was determined indirectly using the methyl tetrazolium test, which was carried out according to standard methods. To study the ultrastructure of infected cells, cells were seeded into a T25 flask and inoculated with the virus at the maximum concentration. After 24 h of cultivation, the cells were fixed in a 2.5 % glutaraldehyde solution in phosphate buffer for 1 h, after which they were washed three times in phosphate buffer and samples were processed for TEM according to standard methods.Results. Diluting the virus 1000 times led to a decrease in the cytostatic effect in all three cultures to a level practically no different from the control. HeLa turned out to be the most sensitive culture to reovirus. In the experiment, the number of living cells decreased to 60.4 ± 10.2 % compared to the control during incubation with the maximum number of viral particles and to 63.7 ± 16.2 % with a tenfold dilution of the virus. This indicator was significantly lower than in the other two studied cultures under these cultivation conditions (p 0.001).In addition, at the maximum virus concentration, the A549 culture was less sensitive than the U87MG culture (p 0.01). At lower concentrations of viral particles, the average viability of the studied cell lines did not differ significantly from each other. Analysis of electron diffraction patterns showed that the virus successfully replicates in the cytoplasm of the studied cultures, but is not released from the cell, which is apparently due to the short incubation period. TEM also showed cell damage characteristic of apoptosis or necroptosis, uniformly expressed in all studied cultures.Conclusion. Cell lines A549, HeLa and U87MG, according to the results of the methyl tetrazolium test, demonstrate different sensitivity to the human reovirus strain P-92. The TEM picture of cells from infected cultures showed signs of the development of apoptosis or necroptosis.