The weights of the hamsters were measured every 3 days to assess weight gain over the course of the experiment as a marker of well being ( Figure 1B) . Notably, from day 3 to day 6, a time before weight loss due to illness from PICV infection would have been expected, hamster weights decreased as the dose of DEF201 increased. This would suggest that the higher treatment doses may have resulted in some loss of appetite, probably due to mild illness due to expression of consensus IFN since no overt effects were noticeable when handling the animals. The hamsters that received the 10 6 pfu dose of DEF201 gained weight through day 6 similarly to the animals treated with saline placebo and the normal controls (sham-infected, untreated) ( Figure 1B) . The high-dose of rAd EV control virus also resulted in a slight reduction in weight compared to the controls, suggesting that the immune response to the adenoviral vector alone may have caused some malaise in the animals.