Absence of evidence for bornavirus infection in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder.

In 1983, reports of antibodies in subjects with major depressive disorder (MDD) to an as-yet uncharacterized infectious agent associated with meningoencephalitis in horses and sheep led to molecular cloning of the genome of a novel, negative-stranded neurotropic virus, Borna disease virus (BDV). This advance has enabled the development of new diagnostic assays, including in situ hybridization, PCR and serology based on recombinant proteins. Since these assays were first implemented in 1990, more than 80 studies have reported an association between BDV and a wide range of human illnesses that include MDD, bipolar disorder (BD), schizophrenia (SZ), anxiety disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, dementia and glioblastoma multiforme. However, to date there has been no blinded case-control study of the epidemiology of BDV infection. Here, in a United States-based, multi-center, yoked case-control study with standardized methods for clinical assessment and blinded serological and molecular analysis, we report the absence of association of psychiatric illness with antibodies to BDV or with BDV nucleic acids in serially collected serum and white blood cell samples from 396 subjects, a study population comprised of 198 matched pairs of patients and healthy controls (52 SZ/control pairs, 66 BD/control pairs and 80 MDD/control pairs). Our results argue strongly against a role for BDV in the pathogenesis of these psychiatric disorders.

A novel tetracycline-controlled transactivator-transrepressor system enables external control of oncolytic adenovirus replication.

The use of restricted replication-competent adenoviruses (RRCAs) inducing tumor cell-specific lysis is a promising approach in cancer gene therapy. However, the use of RRCAs in humans carries considerable risk, since after injection into the patient, further regulation or inhibition of virus replication from the outside is impossible. Therefore, we have developed a novel system allowing external pharmacological control of RRCA replication. We show here that a tumor-selective E1B-deleted RRCA can be tightly regulated by use of doxycycline (dox)-controlled adenoviral E1A gene expression, which in turn determines vector replication. RRCA replication is switched on by addition and switched off by withdrawal of dox. The system results in efficient tumor cell killing after induction by dox, whereas cells are unaffected by the uninduced system. It was also employed for efficient external control of transgene expression from cotransfected replication-deficient adenovectors. Furthermore, the use of a liver cell-specific human alpha1-antitrypsin (hAAT)-promoter driving a tetracycline-controlled transcriptional silencer allowed specific protection of cells with hAAT-promoter activity in the absence of dox in vitro and in vivo, delineating a new principle of 'tissue protective' gene therapy. The concept of external control of RRCAs may help to improve the safety of cancer gene therapy.