Study of the 78A1 isolate of Moloney murine sarcoma virus. II. Haematopoietic tropism and tumourigenicity.

A new isolate of Moloney murine sarcoma virus (Mo-MuSV), designated 78A1, has been molecularly cloned. The cloned genome, found to be larger than that of other known isolates of the same virus is close in size to that of the myeloproliferative sarcoma virus (MPSV), also a derivative of the original Mo-MuSV/Moloney murine leukaemia virus (Mo-MuLV) complex. Until now, MPSV was the only Mo-MuSV isolate known to be capable of inducing a myeloproliferative disease associated with a tumoural syndrome when injected intravenously into sensitive mice. We compared the biological activity of our cloned virus isolate (78A1) and that of another cloned Mo-MuSV virus (HT1) whose genome is slightly smaller than that of 78A1. The helper virus (Mo-MuLV) associated with the Mo-MuSV isolates was also injected alone as control. After injection into sensitive mice only the isolate 78A1, as well as MPSV caused a tumoural syndrome invading spleen, liver and other haematopoietic organs, and the appearance of granulo-macrophage precursors not requiring exogenous stimulating factors for their proliferation and differentiation. The 78A1 virus has a longer latency period (3 months) than MPSV (several days) and does not induce a typical myeloproliferative disease.