The chicken chorioallantoic membrane model for isolation of CRISPR/cas9-based HSV-1 mutant expressing tumor suppressor p53

Oncolytic viruses (OVs) have emerged as a novel cancer treatment modality, which selectively target and kill cancer cells while sparing normal ones. Among them, engineered Herpes Simplex Virus type 1 has been proposed to be employed as a potential treatment of cancer and was moved to phase III clinical trials. In this study, to improve oncoselectivity and oncotoxicity properties, the UL39 gene of the ICP34.5 deleted HSV-1 was manipulated with the insertion of the EGFP-p53 expression cassette utilizing CRISPR/ Cas9-mediated editing genome. The ΔUL39/Δγ34.5/HSV1-p53 mutant was isolated using the chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) of fertilized chicken eggs as a complementing membrane to support the growth of the viruses with gene deficiencies. Phenotypic characterization of ΔUL39/Δγ34.5/HSV1-p53-infected cells was compared with the parent Δγ34.5/HSV-1 in vitro. Our results indicate that the CAM model can be a promising strategy for isolating recombinant virus such as HSV-1-P53 that is unable to replicate in cell lines due to the death induced by exogenous p53 during virus replication.