On the mechanism of phenotypic conversion of human cervical adenocarcinoma HeLa cells surviving infection by influenza B virus: potential implications for biological management of adenocarcinomas.

We infected HeLa cells with low (10(-9) units), medium (10(-6) units), and high (10(-2) units) influenza B titers and compared the resulting human papilloma virus (HPV), retinoic acid receptor alpha subunit (RARalpha) and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) mRNA content of surviving infected hosts with that of their uninfected precursors by semi-quantitative reverse transcriptase/polymerase chain reaction amplification (RT/PCR). This comparison revealed a moderate and drastic dependence of HPV and RARalpha mRNA content, respectively, but a complete independence of GAPDH mRNA expression on viral titer. A mechanism of adoptive replacement of tolerable cellular with viral gene expression was proposed to explain these findings. We conclude that the reported ability of influenza B viruses to specifically target and eliminate the cervical adenocarcinoma HeLa cell line studied may find practical applications in biological cancer management.