Utility of human embryonic kidney cell line HEK-293 for rapid isolation of fixed and street rabies viruses: comparison with Neuro-2a and BHK-21 cell lines.

Background: A confirmatory rabies diagnosis can be achieved by rapid virus isolation in cell culture using brain tissue from the suspect animal. Several cell lines have been used for this purpose and the murine neuroblastoma cell line Neuro-2a has been found to be the most sensitive. The human embryonic kidney cell line HEK-293 is known to express several neuronal proteins and is believed to be of neuronal origin.