Virological and molecular characterisation of a new B lymphoid cell line, established from an AIDS patient with primary effusion lymphoma, harbouring both KSHV/HHV8 and EBV viruses.

We report here a new case of primary effusion lymphoma (PEL), occurring in a French homosexual HIV-1 infected male with a pericardial, pleural and mesenteric tumour dissemination, and the establishment from his pleural effusion of a new cell line, Cra-BCBL, dually infected by EBV and KSHV/HHV8. Cra-BCBL cells are of B-cell origin as judged by their clonal immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) gene rearrangement, identical to that of the parental tumour. Both the cell line and the lymphoma cells expressed CD38 and CD45 antigens but no classical B-cell or T-cell lineage-restricted antigens. Cra-BCBL harbours a type I EBV virus, expressing a latency type II. Expression of KSHV/HHV8 ORF72 and ORF75 was detected by RT/PCR. In addition, KSHV lytic replication could be induced by treatment by n-butyrate. An equivalent and high copy number of KSHV genomes (20 to 200 copies by cell) was detected both in the primary tumour cells and in the cell line. Southern blot (SB) analysis of EBV terminal repeats (TR) displayed the same unique band in the cell line DNA and in the original tumour cells, consistent with a monoclonal infection of EBV. Furthermore, SB analysis of KSHV/HHV8 TR revealed the same hybridisation pattern between Cra-BCBL and the effusion cells, with a common band at around 30-40 kb corresponding to the fused termini of the viral episomes and a 5 Kb rearranged fragment. The new cell line characterised here could be a useful model to study interactions between two human herpes viruses and their contribution to lymphomagenesis.