Abstract
Simian virus 40 (SV40) is a small DNA tumor virus of monkey origin. This polyomavirus was administered to human populations mainly through contaminated polio vaccines, which were produced in naturally infected SV40 monkey cells. Previous molecular biology and recent immunological assays have indicated that SV40 is spreading in human populations, independently from earlier SV40-contaminated vaccines. SV40 DNA sequences have been detected at a higher prevalence in specific human cancer specimens, such as the brain and bone tumors, malignant pleural mesotheliomas, and lymphoproliferative disorders, compared to the corresponding normal tissues/specimens. However, other investigations, which reported negative data, did not confirm an association between SV40 and human tumors. To circumvent the controversies, which have arisen because of these molecular biology studies, immunological researches with newly developed indirect ELISA tests were carried out in serum samples from patients affected by the same kind of tumors as mentioned above. These innovative indirect ELISAs employ synthetic peptides as mimotopes/specific SV40 antigens. SV40 mimotopes do not cross-react with the homologous human polyomaviruses, BKPyV, and JCPyV. Immunological data obtained from indirect ELISAs, using SV40 mimotopes, employed to analyze serum samples from oncological patients, have indicated that these sera had a higher prevalence of antibodies against SV40 compared to healthy subjects. The main data on (i) the biology and genetics of SV40; (ii) the epidemiology of SV40 in the general population, (iii) the mechanisms of SV40 transformation; (iv) the putative role of SV40 in the onset/progression of specific human tumors, and (v) its association with other human diseases are reported in this review.
Highlights
Simian virus 40 (SV40) is a monkey virus that was accidentally administered to human populations through SV40-contaminated vaccines, mainly polio vaccines, between 1955 and 1963 [1]
Further studies with new approaches are needed to clarify these conflicting results and to address the role of SV40 in human cancers. To better elucidate these controversies, novel indirect ELISA tests employing synthetic peptides as mimotopes/specific SV40 antigens were set up [191, 192]. These immunological and specific assays established that anti-SV40 antibodies can be revealed in human sera from patients affected by different tumors [211, 218, 223, 225, 237, 246, 252, 253, 280, 281], of the same kind found to be SV40-positive by molecular biology techniques
SV40 infection in different human populations worldwide has been reported by many groups [160,161,162,163,164]
Summary
Simian virus 40 (SV40) is a monkey virus that was accidentally administered to human populations through SV40-contaminated vaccines, mainly polio vaccines, between 1955 and 1963 [1]. Tag and tag are viral oncoproteins, which induce SV40 DNA replication, gene expression, as well as S-phase entry and DNA synthesis in the host cell, thereby triggering cycle progression (Figure 2) [9]. In rare cases (
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