JC polyomavirus (JCPyV) causes progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), a demyelinating disease of the central nervous system affecting immunocompromised patients. The study of PML-type JCPyV in vitro has been limited owing to the inefficient propagation of the virus in cultured cells. In this study, we carried out long-term culture of COS-7 cells (designated as COS-IMRb cells) transfected with PML-type M1-IMRb, an adapted viral DNA with a rearranged non-coding control region (NCCR). The JCPyV derived from COS-IMRb cells were characterized by analyzing the viral replication, amount of virus by hemagglutination (HA), production of viral protein 1 (VP1), and structure of the NCCR. HA assays indicated the presence of high amounts of PML-type JCPyV in COS-IMRb cells. Immunostaining showed only a small population of JCPyV carrying COS-IMRb cells to be VP1-positive. Sequencing analysis of the NCCR of JCPyV after long-term culture revealed that the NCCR of M1-IMRb was conserved in COS-IMRb cells without any point mutation. The JCPyV genomic DNA derived from a clone of COS-IMRb-3 cells was detected, via Southern blotting, as a single band of approximately 5.1 kbp without deletion. These findings suggest the potential of using COS-IMRb-3 cells as a useful tool for screening anti-JCPyV drugs.
Keywords: COS-IMRb cells; JC polyomavirus; M1-IMRb; non-coding control region.