Oncolytic murine autonomous parvovirus, a candidate vector for glioma gene therapy, is innocuous to normal and immunocompetent mouse glial cells.

The sensitivity of brain tumour cells to wild-type or recombinant parvoviruses H1-PV and MVMp makes these agents promising candidates for gene therapy of astrocytoma. This application raises the question of whether parvoviruses exert deleterious or bystander effects on normal glial cells surrounding tumours. We addressed this question in the mouse model by using cell cultures derived from BALB/c, C57BL/6 and VM/Dk strains. Astrocytes and a large proportion of microglia cultures were competent for MVMp uptake. Infection was, however, abortive as replication-associated viral proteins synthesis took place in less than 10% of astrocytes and no progeny virions were produced. This restriction was even more pronounced for microglia in which no viral protein expression could be detected, save for a minute fraction of VM/Dk-derived cells. Infection with MVMp had no significant effect on glial cell survival and did not interfere with their immune potential. Indeed, neither the lipopolysaccharide (LPS)/interferon (IFN-gamma)-induced cytotoxicity of VM/Dk-derived microglia towards the mouse glioma (MT539MG) cell line, nor the glial cells capacity for tumour necrosis factor alpha production upon LPS stimulation or LPS/IFN-gamma stimulation were affected by infection with MVMp. Moreover, stimulation with LPS and/or IFN-gamma resulted in a decreased expression of the viral replicative and cytotoxic protein NS1. Together, our data indicate that, in the natural host, a majority of normal glial cells are not competent for MVMp replication and that the abortive infection taking place in a minor fraction of these cells fails to impede their survival and immunocompetence, giving credit to the consideration of autonomous parvoviruses for glioma therapy.