Induction of tumors in Syrian hamsters by a human renal papovavirus, RF strain.

Injection of RF virus (RFV), a papovavirus isolated from human urine, into newborn Syrian hamsters induced subcutaneous sarcomas in 50% of the recipients with 18- to 48-week latent periods. Transplantation of 2 X 10(6) primary RFV-induced tumor cells into weaning hamsters caused tumors in 100% of the recipients within 1-2 weeks. Continuous tissue culture cell lines were established from two primary tumors; one of these was transplantable. An in vitro-transformed continuous cell line (RF-194) obtained by infection of primary hamster embryo fibroblasts with RFV was transplantable in weaning hamsters. Neither infectious RFV nor virion antigens were detected in transformed cells. No RFV was recovered when transformed cells were fused with permissive, human embryo kidney cells by means of inactivated Sendai virus. Immunoperoxidase staining was used to show that all three RFV-transformed cell lines contained an intranuclear T-antigen closely similar to that of simian virus 40(SV40)-infected cells. Most hamsters (84%) with primary or transplanted RFV tumors responded with antibodies that reacted with RFV T-antigen and the T-antigen of SV40-infected cells. Likewise, hamster antisera against SV40 T-antigen cross-reacted with RFV T-antigen. Adsorption of RFV T-antisera with an excess of lyophilized SV40-transformed cells removed all detectable activity against SV40 T-antigen but left significant activity against RFV T-antigen. The reciprocal adsorption produced an antiserum spedicic for SV40 T-antigen. Thus human and simian papovavirus T-antigens were related but immunologically separable.