RiV Particles are Heat Stable

Abstract

The “reaction pattern in vertebrate cells” (RiV) is mainly represented by characteristic particles with a diameter of 50 ± 15 nm and smaller RiV-specific units probably as reaction products of the cells to specific stress. As vaccines they have been successfully applied against laryngeal papillomatosis and experimentally against foot-and-mouth disease of guinea pigs and mammary carcinoma of mice. Subsequently, the small-scale treatment of AIDS, cancer and hepatitis C was started in a single doctor's practice. RiV samples of calf kidney cell culture contain identified proteins and non-viral ribonucleic acid. Vaccine samples and samples for heat stability studies were produced from roller bottle cultivated cells after differential centrifugation and a short solvent treatment. The preparations were examined by electron microscopy, ELISA, protein determination, SDS-PAGE, immunoblot and UV spectroscopy. Since the efficacy of heated RiV (10 min at 100 °C) against the growth of balb/c mouse myeloma was higher than that of the non-heated sample, heated RiV samples were investigated by electron microscopy, immunoelectron microscopy (IEM) and ELISA to find a possible explanation for these results. The RiV particles were surprisingly heat-stable, after 10 (up to 60) min of boiling no differences were observed in morphology and diameter in comparison to the untreated sample. Furthermore, no difference was seen by IEM in the reaction of these RiV particles with an anti-RiV antiserum relative to the untreated sample. When two samples were compared by ELISA using the same antiserum, the reactivity of the heated samples decreased quickly during the first minutes of boiling, but the decrease became much slower later on. In conclusion, there seemed to be heat-sensitive as well as heat-stable reactive components within the RiV samples. The heat-stable component(s) should be associated with the RiV particles. Further studies are necessary to find out whether the positive results of the mouse myeloma experiment could also be obtained following the treatment of other cancers, AIDS and hepatitis C and also to answer the question, which of the known proteins are important for the therapeutic activities of RiV samples.