Abstract
African swine fever virus (ASFV) is a highly pathogenic, double-stranded DNA virus with a marked tropism for cells of the monocyte-macrophage lineage, affecting swine species and provoking severe economic losses and health threats. In the present study, four established porcine cell lines, IPAM-WT, IPAM-CD163, C∆2+ and WSL, were compared to porcine alveolar macrophage (PAM) in terms of surface marker phenotype, susceptibility to ASFV infection and virus production. The virulent ASFV Armenia/07, E70 or the naturally attenuated NHV/P68 strains were used as viral models. Cells expressed only low levels of specific receptors linked to the monocyte/macrophage lineage, with low levels of infection overall, with the exception of WSL, which showed more efficient production of strain NHV/P68 but not of strains E70 and Armenia/07.
Highlights
African swine fever virus (ASFV) is the causative agent of African swine fever (ASF), a highly contagious disease affecting different species of swine[1]
When we examined the mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) for these receptors, Porcine alveolar macrophages (PAM) showed a higher level for CD163 and CD169 compared to the other porcine cell lines; the MFI of the SWC3 in the cell lines was high in comparison with the rest of the receptors analysed, and interestingly, the MFI of SLA-II was slightly higher in WSL that in PAM (Fig. 1b)
The results indicate that since the MFI of the SWC3 is higher in respect to CD14, WSL, IPAM-WT and CΔ2+ would derive from myeloid lineage, probably representing immature precursors of macrophages, as they are mostly negative for both macrophage maturation markers CD163 and CD169
Summary
African swine fever virus (ASFV) is the causative agent of African swine fever (ASF), a highly contagious disease affecting different species of swine[1]. Monocytes and alveolar macrophages are the main targets for ASFV infection[1, 17], important for viral pathogenesis as these cells play a central role in the immune response through phagocytosis, antigen presentation and cytokine secretion[18, 19]. CD163 is a member of the scavenger receptor cysteine-rich domain family whose expression is restricted to the monocyte/macrophage lineage and is usually employed as a marker for monocytic differentiation and maturation[25, 26]. The susceptibility of host cells to ASFV seems to be linked to maturity since in vitro maturation of porcine blood monocyte cells (PBMCs) to macrophages, correlating with an up-regulation of CD203 and CD163 expression, has been shown to increase ASFV infection[24, 43]. The role of CD163 in ASFV infection is controversial since it has been published that the expression of CD163 alone is not enough to increase the susceptibility to the virus in non-permissive cells[44], and pigs lacking CD163 showed no resistance to infection with the ASFV isolate Georgia 2007/145
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