Patent Abstract:
the present invention concerns a pharmaceutical composition comprising virtosomes isolated from non - dividing cells or the medium in which the cells are grown , for use in the inhibition of tumor growth and / or prevention of metastases .

Detailed Description:
a more detailed description of example embodiments of the invention will now be given . the virtosomes are prepared from any non - dividing cells or tissues either in its newly synthesised form in the cytosol or after its spontaneous release from cells . the following example will demonstrate the retention of biological activity by the virtosomes isolated from either the cell environment ( e . g . culture medium ) or the cytosol . freshly isolated mouse spleen lymphocytes are cultured at a concentration of 5 × 10 6 cells for 16 h overnight at 37 . 5 ° c . in 100 ml of rp mi 1640 medium ( 88 ml ) containing cpsr - 2 ( 10 ml ), 10 % gentamycin ( 0 . 8 ml ) and 200 mm glutamine ( 1 . 2 ml ) as a settling - in period . the cells are then separated by gentle centrifugation followed by re - suspension and re - incubation . the medium containing the virtosomes is made by seeding lymphocytes at a concentration of 3 × 10 6 ml − 1 in 100 ml of rpmi medium 1640 ( 88 ml )+ 10 % cprs - 2 ( 10 ml ), 10 % gentamycin ( 0 . 8 ml ) and 200 mm glutamine ( 1 . 2 ml ) at 37 . 5 ° c . and removing them after 8 h by centrifugation at 500 g for 10 min . the supernatant is further centrifuged at 1 . 2 × 10 5 g for 1 h in a preparation centrifuge . the preparation of the virtosomes from the cytosol of either any cell type e . g . lymphocytes ( 26 ) or any tissue e . g . liver ( 26 ) is made by gently breaking the cells / tissues open in a serum - free medium using a tenbrock glass homogeniser ( 10 up - and - down gentle passes ) with a teflon pestle . the resultant homogenate is centrifuged at 500 g for 10 min . the supernatant is further centrifuged at 1 . 2 × 10 5 g for 1 h in an ultracentrifuge ( 26 ). only the virtosomes of the cytosolic particles are not pelleted after ultracentrifugation . isolation of the virtosomes after ultracentrifugation from either supernatant is achieved by agarose gel chromatography . agarose gel columns ( 48 cm long × 2 . 5 cm diameter ) with an exclusion limit of 1 . 5 × 10 6 daltons are equilibriated with phosphate buffered saline ( ph 7 . 4 ). two ml of the ultra - centrifuged medium are loaded onto the column and eluted by gravity flow with the same buffer ( 30 ml h − 1 flow rate ). of the 50 fractions collected , fractions 32 - 42 contain the eluted virtosomes from either source . the void volume is determined with blue dextran and serum albumin is used to determine the molecular weight elution pattern . the virtosomes may also be prepared by filtration of the supernatant from ultracentrifugation through a millipore bacterial filter of pore size 0 . 2 μm . alternatively , the virtosomes may be separated by density gradient centrifugation using e . g . sucrose ( 7 ) or caesium chloride gradients ( 1 ). the purified virtosomes are tested for the retention of biological activity after purification . thus , either the cytosolic or the culture medium derived virtosomes purified from either non - stimulated mouse lymphocytes or mouse liver are tested against a culture of mouse tumour cell line j774 . as a control , the virtosomes from cells of tumour cell lines j774 and p497 are similarly prepared and tested against the tumour cell line j773 cells . the sterilized solutions are added to the cell cultures so forming 20 % of the final cell incubation medium . the results indicate that neither the j774 nor the p497 virtosomes have an effect upon the j774 cells . however , the virtosomes isolated from the non - stimulated lymphocyte result in a reduction of j774 dna synthesis and hence cell replication , by almost 70 % whilst the liver cytosolic virtosomes yield an inhibition of approximately 60 % ( 26 ). however , j774 and the p497 virtosomes have little effect ( 10 - 15 %) on normal dividing 3t3 fibroblasts . in addition , the tumour cell line sw480 co - cultured with virtosomes from non - dividing hepatocytes for 24 h showed a reduction of cell replication of more than 80 %. a similar experiment with ht1080 , a fibrosarcoma cell line , showed a reduction of about 90 % after 24 h treatment . without further treatment , the remaining cells were able to divide and so escape the effects of the virtosomes . moreover , when virtosomes were introduced into a 4 - day culture of ht1080 cells where the cell numbers had reached to between 100 , 000 to 150 , 000 , the addition of hepatic virtosomes reduced the cells number by three to seven times depending upon the concentration of the virtosomes added . human non - stimulated lymphocyte virtosomes also block cell division in stimulated lymphocytes ( 27 ). the virtosomes so produced from non - dividing cell populations ( either from cultures or tissues ) are injected intravenously into the tumour - bearing rats . this can involve virtosomes that have been prepared from the tumour bearer &# 39 ; s own cells / tissues . thus , transfer of the application of virtosomal inhibition of tumour cell replication in vitro to an in vivo model was achieved after confirming that virtosomal preparations from non - dividing hepatocytes had no effect upon the rat strain bdix employed . daily intravenous injection was made for 10 consecutive days of non - dividing hepatocyte virtosomes into bdix male rats that had been previously inoculated with dhd / k12 - prob cells in order to induce the formation of a tumour similar to colon adenocarcinoma . the presence of the virtosomes limited tumour development for the following 14 days , the tumours being either partially or completely reduced in size . as has been mentioned for the in vitro tumour cell cultures , the tumours reduced in size will require additional virtosomal treatment to reduce them further . the examples and embodiments given in the present application are , of course , only for illustrative purposes and should not be considered in a limiting fashion . other variants using equivalent means are of course possible as well without imparting from the spirit a scope of the present invention . in particular , other applications may be envisaged in the frame of the present invention and different embodiments may also be combined . 1 . stroun , m . & amp ; anker , p . 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