Quantitative and in vivo activity of adenoviral-producing cells made by cotransduction of a replication-defective adenovirus and a replication-enabling plasmid.

Achieving limited recombinant viral replication may provide a means of amplifying viral-mediated gene transfer in vivo. We have previously shown that cotransduction of an E1-defective adenovirus with a plasmid containing the deleted E1 functions into prostate carcinoma cells resulted in E1-defective virus production by those cells. The studies described here have extended these findings to more firmly establish the capacity of the trans complementation approach to achieve amplification of recombinant viral transgene expression. The recombinant virus used for all the studies was AdCMV-luc which contained a luciferase expression cassette; the replication-enabling plasmid, pE1, encoded the E1 functions deleted from AdCMV-luc. Quantitative in vitro studies with the HeLa cell line showed that for each plaque forming unit of AdCMV-luc originally exposed to the cells, 0.54 x 10(3) new replication-defective viruses were detected in supernatants and lysates over the following 4 days. Multiple cell lines were shown to support new virus production following cotransduction of AdCMV-luc and pE1. Small numbers of replication-competent viruses were detected in the lysates and supernatants from the cotransduced cells such that for every 10(5) replication-defective viruses approximately two replication-competent viruses were produced. Tumor nodules produced by engrafting a mixture of AdCMV-luc/pE1-cotransduced HeLa cells with uninfected HeLa cells yielded much higher levels of luciferase expression than control tumors containing mixtures of cells infected with AdCMV-luc alone. In total, these results demonstrate new virus production by cells receiving a replication-defective adenovirus and a replication-enabling plasmid are capable of amplifying recombinant viral transgene expression in vivo.