Rabies virus has been known as one of the most cumbersome viruses in the attempts of
in vitro cultivation. Kanazawa (1936) first succeeded in growing a fixed rabies strain in tissue culture with rabbit embryo brain, and similar results were obtained by Webster and Clow (1936), Webster (1937), Bernkopf and Kligler (1937), Schultz and Williams (1937-8) and Parker and Hollender (1945) using mouse embryo brain. Plotz and Reagan (1942) also passed two street virus strains in tissue culture employing whole chick embryo. However, no convincing evidence has ever been presented for success in cultivation of this virus without recourse to nervous tissues, despite the remarkable progress of tissue culture techniques during the last decade. Besides, the culture fluid in the above successful cases generally showed only low levels of viral yield, and reproducibility of those results seemed to vary greatly among different strains (Kanazawa, personal communication) .
Recently, Bequignon and coworkers (1954) observed maintenance over a period of 65 days of rabbit-fixed Pasteur strain in roller tube cultures employing mouse embryo brain, and stated that the fibroblastic outgrowth seemed to produce virus without showing any cytopathic changes. Unfortunately, however, these results could not be reproduced in our hands with our mouse-fixed strains, nor with their street virus (Vienchange
et al., 1956) . Also recently, Kanazawa (personal communication) could pass egg-adapted Nishigahara strain in tissue culture with chick embryo cells, but fairly luxuriant virus growth was seen only in the first few passages. With the same technique, however, we could not obtain any growth of the egg-adapted Flury strain. Thus, a time has not yet come when tissue culture virus can be commonly used as a source of vaccine, although earlier data given by Webster and Clow (1936), Kligler and Bernkopf (1938) and Webster (1938) cast promissing light on such practical application of culture virus.
In the meantime, it was found here that two strains of rabies virus, mouse-fixed CVS and early egg passage of Flury, could readily grow in 1-day eggs (Yoshino
et al., 1956 a) and that adult-mouse-non-pathogenic HEP (high egg passage) rabies viruses were rather more infective to 1-day eggs (Kuma, 1958) . These discoveries, coupled by the information that the 1-day egg whose egg-white was replaced with saline could serve as a new type of tissue culture for herpes simplex virus (Yoshino and Taniguchi, 1957), led the authors to the attempt to cultivate the above strains of rabies virus in the egg-white-replaced 1-day egg (ERO), with the result that sufficient growth in the blastodermal tissues as well as release into saline of these viruses was observed. In addition, 1-day egg-adapted lines of these strains produced by serial 1-day egg passage were also grown in this culture system in comparison with their respective mother strains. Of course, the present ERO culture method is by no means perfectly satisfactory, but the results to be reported will suggest that the ERO is applicable not only for the practical purposes such as vaccine production but also for some theoretical studies of the host-virus interactions.
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