Poster Presentation 9th Australasian Virology Society Meeting 2017

The role of white adipose tissue in modulating the replication of murine cytomegalovirus (#194)

Pablo Garcia Valtanen 1 , Ruth M Guzman Sarra 1 , John D Hayball 1 2 , Kerrilyn R Diener 1 2
  1. School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences, University of South Australia, ADELAIDE, SA, Australia
  2. Robinson Research Institute and Adelaide Medical School, The University of Adelaide, ADELAIDE, SA, Australia

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) chronically infects between 40 and 99% of the population depending on the country(Cannon, Schmid et al. 2010) and no cure or vaccine exists to prevent its infection.  To facilitate persistent infections and latency HCMV suppresses the immune response utilising its own interleukin (IL)-10-like molecule(Jenkins, Abendroth et al. 2004) as well as inducing IL-10 expression in the host's cells.(Poole, Avdic et al. 2014) Recent studies have shown that white adipose tissue (WAT) is both an immune organ capable to respond to viral infections (Yu, Yan et al. 2014) and a rich source of IL-10 (Juge-Aubry, Somm et al. 2005, Winer, Winer et al. 2014). Therefore, we hypothesized that WAT is important in the first stages of cytomegalovirus infections. To test our hypothesis we used murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV), as a surrogate model for the study of HCMV, to study the kinetics of cytokine expression in WAT in response to MCMV and poly(I:C), and the effects of WAT-secreted soluble factors on the ability of MCMV to replicate in mouse fibroblasts and different types of immune cells in vitro.

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