抄録
Infectious virus contamination is an important issue for security of researchers in the field of cell and tissue culture. To the exclude the possibility of accidental infection of HIV-1 to cell culture workers, we examined 254 human and monkey cell lines by a PCR protocol for detection of latent HIV-1 DNA in cultured cell lines. With this protocol, the partial HIV-I gag DNA is detected with high sensitivity; a sample containing only 55 copies in a plasmid DNA or in 10 HIV-1-infected cells showed as positive in the test. So far, none of the cell lines examined showed evidence of latent infection with HIV-1. The results show that, at present, primate cell lines in common use in Japan can be considered to be HIV-I virus free.
