In vivo behavior of genetically engineered herpes simplex viruses R7017 and R7020: construction and evaluation in rodents.

The herpes simplex virus (HSV) recombinant R7017 was constructed from HSV-1 (strain F) by deleting a portion of the thymidine kinase (tk) gene and by replacing the sequences representing the internal inverted repeats and adjacent genes in the L component with a fragment of the HSV-2 genome encoding the glycoproteins G, D, I, and a portion of E. In addition, the R7020 recombinant contains an HSV-1 DNA fragment encoding the tk gene fused to the alpha 4 gene promoter. The results of studies in mice, guinea pigs, and rabbits were as follows: Both recombinants remained unchanged after nine serial, intracerebral passages in mice; the recombinants could not be differentiated with respect to attenuation in mice injected intracerebrally, in vaginally infected guinea pigs, and in rabbits inoculated on the scarified cornea. Given intradermally or intramuscularly, the recombinants prevented severe infections by virulent challenge viruses, and R7020 established latent infections (at a low frequency) in all species tested, whereas latent R7017 virus was detected in rabbits only.