Immunological and Chemotherapeutic Prevention and Control of Oncogenic Viruses

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the immunological and chemotherapeutic prevention and control of oncogenic viruses. The development of in vitro (tissue culture) assay systems has facilitated the rapid testing of drugs and other potentially active antiviral agents. In addition, these assays have been found useful in studies designed to elucidate the mechanism of inhibitory action of antiviral agents. Murine leukemia viruses are assayed by the XC-test, in which a quantitative number of syncytia are formed. Infective titers of murine sarcoma virus can be quantitated by the number of foci formed on mouse embryo fibroblast cultures. These assays have shown to be useful for isolating naturally occurring viruses of the murine leukemic group in tissue culture and for determining the helper role that murine leukemia viruses possess for defective murine sarcoma virus. Several murine leukemia and sarcoma virus-transformed cell lines have been established and have been employed for testing drugs. An alkaloid extract of the Narcissus bulb and rifampycin derivatives have been shown to exert an in vitro inhibitory effect on murine leukemia and sarcoma virus replication.