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Journal of Virology, January 2005, p. 622-625, Vol. 79, No. 1
0022-538X/05/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JVI.79.1.622-625.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Department of Virology,1 Laboratory of Neurovirology, Department of Neurology, Hadassah Medical School, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel2
Received 7 June 2004/ Accepted 27 August 2004
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To overcome such limitations, several approaches aimed at increasing particle transfer to the cell surface have been utilized, including centrifugation (20) and the flow of virus through porous membranes embedded with cells (7). Such methods, while increasing the rate of cell approach to some extent, do not synchronize the adsorption step and require significant manipulation of the sample.
Magnetically reactive carriers are being increasingly harnessed for biomedical purposes. Applications include cell tracking and separation (12, 16), DNA extraction (8), viral concentration (14), and drug targeting (17). This concept has recently been utilized to augment the transfer of expression vectors for gene therapy purposes (22). Here we report the use of magnetite nanoparticles (MNPs) in order to synchronize the adsorption of a viral preparation to the target cell culture.
Preparation and infection by magnetically controlled lentivirus. Primary rat aortic endothelial cells (RAECs) were isolated as previously described (19) and cultured in 12-well plates in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium supplemented with 2 mM L-glutamine, 100 U of penicillin G per ml, 0.1 mg of streptomycin per ml, and 10% fetal calf serum.
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)-based lentiviruses were generated by transient transfection of 293T cells (10). The packaging system consisted of the pCMV
R8.91 packaging construct (29), an envelope glycoprotein construct (as noted in the text) and a pHR'-based transfer vector expressing the nuclear localized ß-galactosidase or luciferase gene (18, 29). Infectious unit (IU) content of ß-galactosidase-expressing lentiviral preparations was determined on RAECs in the presence of 8 µg of Polybrene per ml.
Lentiviral stocks were rendered magnetically reactive by association with anionically charged MNPs (TransMAG-PD; Chemicell, Berlin, Germany). These single-domain MNPs, 50 nm in diameter (about half the size of the lentiviral particle), are composed of an iron oxide core coated by a starch polymer modified with phosphate groups. Complexes between virus and MNP, both possessing a net negative surface charge, are formed by colloidal clustering, facilitated by positively charged ions in the solution (21, 27).
Concentrated viral stocks (24), suspended in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) (pH 7.4), were preincubated for 2 min at room temperature with the MNP formulation (133 µg/ml in PBS) and immediately added to the cells. A magnetic field was applied by positioning a permanent Nd-Fe-B magnet (Magma Magnets, Kibbutz Gesher, Israel) under the culture plate, producing a magnetic flux density of approximately 1 T. After incubation at 37°C, the magnet was removed, and the cells were washed three times with culture medium and assayed for the HIV-1 p24 antigen as a quantitative viral marker (5) or cultured further for gene transfer assays. It should be noted that the ionic composition of both preincubation solution (PBS) and culture medium was of significant importance for virus-MNP complex formation and integrity. The level of calcium in culture medium particularly affected the stability of virus-MNP complexes, with optimal results attained at 1.5 to 2 mM CaCl2.
Synchronized adsorption of magnetically controlled virus. Magnetic field reactivity of lentiviruses pseudotyped with the vesicular stomatitis virus G protein (lenti-VSVG [6]) was assessed by measuring viral adsorption to RAEC cultures. These primary isolated cells were selected, since they may be cultured as a monolayer for several days postconfluence (19). As illustrated in Fig. 1A, more than 80% of the virus preincubated with MNPs was rapidly transferred to the cell-associated state by application of a magnetic field. No significant change in viral distribution occurred during this brief adsorption period for both virus alone and virus preincubated with MNPs when no magnetic field was applied.
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FIG. 1. Magnetically controlled adsorption of lentivirus to RAEC monolayers. (A) Redistribution of viral particles from the medium to the cell-associated state. Preparations of lenti-VSVG virus expressing ß-galactosidase (8 ng of p24 antigen) were preincubated with MNPs or PBS and added to RAEC monolayers (4 x 105 cells per well) with or without the application of a magnetic field. After a 7-min incubation period at 37°C and 5% CO2, the infection medium was removed, and cells were washed three times with culture medium. Both fractions were then assayed using the HIV-1 p24 antigen capture assay kit (SAIC Frederick, AIDS Vaccine Program). Values represent the mean p24 antigen levels ± standard errors (SE) (error bars) in an experiment performed with four replicate samples. (B) Infection by lenti-VSVG expressing luciferase. Cultures were adsorbed with the virus for the indicated periods, washed three times with culture medium, and incubated for 48 h until luciferase enzyme activity was assayed using the dual luciferase kit (Promega Corp., Madison, Wis.). Light emission was measured with the Lucy-1 microplate luminometer (AnthosLabtec Instruments, Salzburg, Austria) as previously described (4). Protein content in each preparation was determined by the Bradford method, and results are presented as the mean relative light unit (RLU) measurement per microgram of protein extracted ± SE (error bars). (C) Infection by lenti-VSVG expressing ß-galactosidase (3 x 103 IU). Values represent the mean number of ß-galactosidase-positive cells ± SE (error bars) counted after 5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl-ß-D-galactopyranoside (X-Gal) staining of cultures 48 h postadsorption (1).
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Infectivity of magnetically adsorbed virus. The 70-fold magnetically induced increase in lenti-VSVG adsorption (Fig. 1A) correlated well with the increase in infection, as measured by both the level of transgene product (114-fold increase in luciferase activity [Fig. 1B]) and number of infection events (92-fold increase in ß-galactosidase-positive cells [Fig. 1C]). We further characterized the progression of productive adsorption to the cell culture by examining the effect of incubation time on lenti-VSVG infection. As expected, the number of productive adsorption events by virus alone slowly increased, reaching maximal levels after 20 h (Fig. 2A). This increase corresponded to the decrease in residual infectivity left in the medium (Fig. 2B). In contrast, maximal productive adsorption by magnetically controlled virus was reached after 1 min of incubation. Moreover, the infectivity of magnetically adsorbed preparations was increased approximately 2.5-fold relative to the maximal values observed for virus alone (Fig. 1B, 1C, and 2A). Therefore, the plateau in infection by virus alone does not represent the complete redistribution of the inoculum to the cell-associated state but reflects the reduced infectivity of the residual virus in the medium, in accord with the previously reported half-life of 10.4 h for the VSVG-pseudotyped lentivirus (13). This was further confirmed by p24 antigen measurements, which indicated that more than 60% of the initially added virus still remained in the medium after the 20-h incubation period (data not shown). Thus, by reducing the adsorption period to 1 min, limitations imposed by particle diffusion on both cell attachment and stock infectivity were surmounted.
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FIG. 2. Adsorption kinetics of lenti-VSVG virus. RAEC monolayers (4 x 105 cells per well) were adsorbed with the lenti-VSVG virus expressing ß-galactosidase (3 x 103 IU in 600 µl of culture medium). At the indicated time points, the infection medium was removed and added to an adjacent well similarly plated with RAECs. Cells initially adsorbed were then washed three times with culture medium, and all cultures were incubated further until X-Gal staining was performed 48 h later. Data are presented as the number of ß-galactosidase-positive cells counted in cultures initially adsorbed with the virus (A) and in cultures incubated with the residual virus-containing medium (B). Each datum point represents the mean value obtained from three or four replicate samples ± SE (error bars).
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The adsorption of diffusion-controlled virus by cells is dependent upon the distance of the virus from the cell surface (2). Hence, for short incubation periods, the volume of the suspending medium affects infectivity linearly (3, 7). Indeed, as shown in Fig. 3, infection by both virus alone and virus preincubated with MNPs in the absence of a magnetic field was dependent on viral concentration. In contrast, magnetically controlled virus does not conform to Brownian diffusion and therefore demonstrated complete concentration independence.
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FIG. 3. Effect of viral concentration on infection. RAEC monolayers (4 x 105 cells per well) were adsorbed with a fixed inoculum of lenti-VSVG virus expressing ß-galactosidase (2 x 104 IU per well) in increasing volumes of culture medium. After the indicated incubation period at 37°C and 5% CO2, nonadsorbed virus was removed by three washes with culture medium, and samples were incubated further until X-Gal staining 48 h later. Data represent the mean number of ß-galactosidase-positive cells ± SE (error bars) from three separate experiments performed in triplicate and are expressed as a percentage of the number of positive cells counted at the lowest dilution.
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Viral host range for infection was unaltered by magnetically mediated adsorption. The ß-galactosidase-expressing lentivirus was pseudotyped with the ecotropic Moloney murine leukemia virus (eco-MuLV) envelope glycoprotein, and infectivity was assessed on cell lines derived of mouse and human origin (15, 26). We found that magnetically controlled adsorption of NIH 3T3 murine cells with the eco-MuLV pseudotype significantly augmented infection; titers of viral preparations containing 1 x 105 IU/ml (determined by the standard serial dilution assay [24-h adsorption period]) were increased to 3.4 x 105 IU/ml in magnetically adsorbed cultures. However, no infection of the human-derived HeLa or 293T lines was observed in either diffusion or magnetically adsorbed cultures (titer of <101 IU/ml). We therefore conclude that cell entry by magnetically controlled virus is gained through the receptor-dependent mechanism.
While all experiments described in this work were performed at low multiplicities of infection (MOIs of <0.01), it could be argued that due to complex formation with MNPs, viruses enter cells in clusters, potentially resulting in multiple provirus copies per cell. To test this possibility, we infected cell cultures with increasing titers (MOI of 0.01 to 4) of the eGFP-expressing lenti-VSVG and examined the mean fluorescence intensity of infected cells by fluorescence-activated cell sorting analysis (11). Results indicated that, for each level of infection (percentage of eGFP-positive cells), the mean fluorescence of the eGFP-positive cell population was similar for magnetically and diffusion-controlled infection (data not shown). Therefore, a similar viral copy number infects cells adsorbed by both methods.
In conclusion, by magnetically controlling the rate-limiting adsorption step, we abolish the dependence on diffusion for viral infection. This method should prove advantageous for those applications requiring synchronous infection of a cell culture to accurately determine the kinetics of both extra- and intracellular single steps in the retroviral replication cycle.
This work was supported by the European Commission program no. 5, Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources, and by a grant from the Philip Morris External Research Program.
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