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 α subunit (RARα) 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 RARα 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.