Animal virus propagation

There is no good animal model for infection by HIV. The virus will infect several primates, but it does not produce active disease and it is not practical to use primates for propagation of the virus. The chimpanzee has been used in vaccine trials to determine whether neutralizing antibody is produced and whether the growth of the virus can be inhibited in vivo. More productive work has been done using the immunodeficiency viruses of the species (e.g., simian immunodeficiency virus in macaques, feline immunodeficiency virus in cats) to study pathogenesis and treatment of retroviral acquired immunodeficiencies. 

As separation of recombinant and helper virus yet cannot be achieved, an alternative propagation method using psi-2 cells (13) can be chosen if viremia from the helper virus is to be avoided in the resulting animals. Psi-2 cell lines have incorporated a retroviral genome which cannot be packaged into virus particles... 

Rourou, S., van der Ark, A., van der Velden, T., and Kallel, H. (2007) A microcarrier cell culture process for propagating rabies virus in Vero cells grown in a stirred bioreactor under fully animal component free conditions. Vaccine, 25 (19), 3879-3889. 

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