Developing an Antiviral Drug Screening System for Anti-Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus (BVDV) Therapies
Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) is an economically important animal pathogen affecting cattle. Despite the use of vaccination, test and slaughter practices, BVD remains a serious problem of cattle breeding. This study was conducted in order to develop a cell line that expresses some of BVDV sub-replicons. BVDV-NADL NS3 and 5’UTR were cloned in pWPI-linker B lentiviral plasmid at the upstream of EGFP gene. Consequently, lentiviral vectors containing BVDV-NS3 and BVDV-5’UTR were produced by using the second-generation lentiviral packaging system. By these lentivectors, MDBK cells expressing BVDV-5’UTR and BVDV-NS3 partial fragments were prepared. The efficiency of the infection was evaluated by fluorescence microscopy, western blotting, and RT-PCR. The results indicated that the development of MDBK cell line expressing these transgenes provides a very sensitive antiviral drug screening system for anti-bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) therapies.