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Potential neoplastic evolution of Vero cells: in vivo and in vitro characterization

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Abstract

Vero cell lines are extensively employed in viral vaccine manufacturing. Similarly to all established cells, mutations can occur during Vero cells in vitro amplification which can result in adverse features compromising their biological safety. To evaluate the potential neoplastic evolution of these cells, in vitro transformation test, gene expression analysis and karyotyping were compared among low- (127 and 139 passages) and high-passage (passage 194) cell lines, as well as transformed colonies (TCs). In vivo tumorigenicity was also tested to confirm preliminary in vitro data obtained for low passage lines and TCs. Moreover, Vero cells cultivated in foetal bovine serum-free medium and derived from TCs were analysed to investigate the influence of cultivation methods on tumorigenic evolution. Low-passage Vero developed TCs in soft agar, without showing any tumorigenic evolution when inoculated in the animal model. Karyotyping showed a hypo-diploid modal chromosome number and rearrangements with no difference among Vero cell line passages and TCs. These abnormalities were reported also in serum-free cultivated Vero. Gene expression revealed that high-passage Vero cells had several under-expressed and a few over-expressed genes compared to low-passage ones. Gene ontology revealed no significant enrichment of pathways related to oncogenic risk. These findings suggest that in vitro high passage, and not culture conditions, induces Vero transformation correlated to karyotype and gene expression alterations. These data, together with previous investigations reporting tumour induction in high-passage Vero cells, suggest the use of low-passage Vero cells or cell lines other than Vero to increase the safety of vaccine manufacturing.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr. Roberta Trainini, Dr. Chiara Tontini for technical assistance and Dr. Daniela Gelmetti and Dr. Lucia Gibelli for histological investigations. The study has been supported by a Grant from the Regione Lombardia (Project Reg. Lomb. Cell 2008) and a Grant from the Ministero della Salute (PRC2014009).

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale della Lombardia e dell’Emilia Romagna, Via Bianchi 9, 25124, Brescia, Italy

      N. A. Andreani, S. Renzi, R. Villa, M. Ferrari & S. Dotti

    2. Department of Molecular and Translational Medicine, University of Brescia, V.le Europa 11, 25123, Brescia, Italy

      G. Piovani

    3. Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Piacenza, Piacenza, Italy

      P. Ajmone Marsan & L. Bomba

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    1. N. A. Andreani
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    Correspondence to R. Villa.

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    N. A. Andreani and S. Renzi have contributed equally to the study.

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    Fig. S1

    Graphical representation of the experimental design and major results of the study. Dots in the in vitro section means positivity to the test. The red circle in the in vivo experiment means tumour formation after inoculum of the cell line in nude mice. (PDF 1603 kb)

    Tab. S1

    Log fold-change of DEGs in pairwise comparisons. the first column reports feature IDs obtained in the RNA-seq experiment. Columns 2, 3 and 4 show log fold-change values of each pairwise comparison. A positive value means higher expression in the first term of the comparison; on the contrary, a negative value means higher expression in the second term of the comparison. (DOCX 31 kb)

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    Andreani, N.A., Renzi, S., Piovani, G. et al. Potential neoplastic evolution of Vero cells: in vivo and in vitro characterization. Cytotechnology 69, 741–750 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10616-017-0082-7

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10616-017-0082-7

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