A novel murine model for evaluating bovine papillomavirus prophylactics/therapeutics for equine sarcoid-like tumours

• Published in: Journal of general virology Vol. 96; no. 9; pp. 2764 - 2768
• Main Authors: Bogaert, Lies, Woodham, Andrew W, Da Silva, Diane M, Martens, Ann, Meyer, Evelyne, Kast, W Martin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Society for General Microbiology 01.09.2015
• Subjects: Animals; Bovine papillomavirus 1 - genetics; Bovine papillomavirus 1 - physiology; Disease Models, Animal; Horse Diseases - prevention & control; Horse Diseases - therapy; Horse Diseases - virology; Horses; Mice; Papillomavirus Infections - prevention & control; Papillomavirus Infections - therapy; Papillomavirus Infections - veterinary; Papillomavirus Infections - virology; Short Communication; Skin Neoplasms - prevention & control; Skin Neoplasms - therapy; Skin Neoplasms - veterinary; Skin Neoplasms - virology
• ISSN: 0022-1317; 1465-2099
• DOI: 10.1099/vir.0.000212

Equine sarcoids are highly recurrent bovine papillomavirus (BPV)-induced fibroblastic neoplasms that are the most common skin tumours in horses. In order to facilitate the study of potential equine sarcoid prophylactics or therapeutics, which can be a slow and costly process in equines, a murine model for BPV-1 protein-expressing equine sarcoid-like tumours was developed in mice through stable transfection of BPV-1 E5 and E6 in a murine fibroblast tumour cell line (K-BALB). Like equine sarcoids, these murine tumour cells (BPV-KB) were of fibroblast origin, were tumorigenic and expressed BPV-1 proteins. As an initial investigation of the preclinical potential of this tumour model for equine sarcoids prophylactics, mice were immunized with BPV-1 E5E6 Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus replicon particles, prior to BPV-KB challenge, which resulted in an increased tumour-free period compared with controls, indicating that the BPV-KB murine model may be a valuable preclinical alternative to equine clinical trials.