The Research Of AIDS Animal Model Establishment In Chinese Rhesus Macaques Infected With Simian Immunodeficiency Virus SIVmac239

Animal models are powerful tools for many diseases. Non-human primates are phylogenetically the closest to humans. The similarities in physiology and immunology allow a more reliable extrapolation of results obtained in primate models to clinical applications for humans. While chimpanzees can be infected with HIV-1, this animal model is not practical due to the low availability, high price, low viral virulence, and ethical issues. Many nonhuman primate species in Africa are naturally infected with simian immunodeficiency virus strains; despite persistent high-level virus replication, these natural hosts do not develop disease. In contrast however, infection of non-natural hosts, such as macaques, with virulent SIV isolates results in a disease that resembles human AIDS, and the same laboratory markers can be used to monitor diseases progression.In this research, we recoveried SIVmac239 and SHIV89.6 from clone vectors. Two Chinese rhesus monkeys were inoculated intravenously with 5000 TCID50 of SIVmac239 generated by the transfection of CEMx174 cells with infectious molecular clone p239SpSp5' /p239SpE3'. We monitored the changes of weight, proviral DNA, CD4~+ T lymphocyte, virus antibody and pathological changes of tissues periodically during 121 days. In early stage of infection, proviral DNA was detected in PBMCs, and infectious SIVmac239 virus was separated from PBMCs. At the same time, CD4~+ T lymphocytes were significantly deleted, and maintained in lower level during 121-day period of infection. Anti-virus antibodies were detected from plasma at early infection. During 121-day of infection, pathological changes were found in intestinals and some lymph nodes, especially in intestinal lamina propria. Our data showed that two Chinese rhesus monkeys were infected with SIVmac239 successfully, and this animal model can be used in deeply related AIDS research.