Figure 7. In vivo infectivity of Con1/wt, Con1/K1846T and Con1/NS3+K1846T genomes in uPA-SCID mice.

Huh7-Lunet cells were transfected with either of these constructs, supernatants were collected 12 and 24 h post transfection, pooled for each construct and used for virus purification and concentration as described in Materials and Methods. Two mice were each inoculated with 2×10⁸ IU HCV RNA per mouse and construct (100 µl inoculum size) and viral RNA loads in sera were determined at the indicated time points after inoculation by qRT-PCR. In case of Con1/K1846T inoculated mice, one died at week 2 (not shown) and the second shortly after week 6. While sera of Con1/wt and Con1/K1846T inoculated mice contained high viral loads already in the first blood sample, Con1/NS3+K1846T-inoculated mice remained HCV RNA negative throughout the 10 weeks observation period.