Alphavirus M1 is a promising oncolytic virus for cancer therapy. Here, we constructed a fluorescent reporter virus for real-time visualization and quantification of M1 virus both in vitro and in vivo. The reporter-encoding M1 virus maintained the characteristics of parental virus in the aspects of structure, replication capacity, the feature to induce cytopathic cell death, and the property of tumor targeting. The fluorescence is positively correlated with virus replication both in vitro and in vivo. More importantly, the reporter can be stably expressed for at least 10 generations in a serial passage assay. In summary, we successfully constructed stable and authentic reporter viruses for studying M1 virus and provided a feasible technical route for gene modification of oncolytic virus M1.
Keywords: GFP; alphavirus M1; iRFP; reporter virus; tumor selectivity.