Project Title: Macrophage cell-lines for in vitro propagation of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus

Institution: Washington State University

Outcome/Results: Cell-lines susceptible to PRRSV infection were developed.

Vaccination of pigs against PRRSV is the most practical and logical way of controlling this economically important disease. Production of vaccines requires large scale growing of PRRSV in the laboratories of pharmaceutical companies. The cell-line that is currently available for production of PRRSV in the laboratory is the green monkey kidney cell-line, which has been patented. Availability of additional cell-lines for production of PRRSV should encourage the development of vaccines by several biologics companies, which will increase the likelihood of several effective vaccines against PRRSV becoming available in the future. In this study, we have developed cell-lines that are susceptible to PRRSV infection, by taking a receptor for PRRSV on pig lung macrophages and placing it into a bovine macrophage cell-line. Additional experiments in the future will determine whether any of these cell-lines could be used in growing PRRSV on a large scale for vaccine production.