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Updated: Sep 27, 2026
"Liver-on-a-Chip" Cultures of Primary Hepatocytes and Kupffer Cells for Hepatitis B Virus Infection
Published on: February 19, 2019
A study of susceptibility of primary human Kupffer cells to hepatitis C virus
Cathy Royer1, Anne-Marie Steffan, Maria-Cristina Navas
1Institut de Virologie de la Faculté de Médecine de Strasbourg, INSERM U544, 3 Rue Koeberlé, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
Background/Aims:
Histological examination of a liver-biopsy from a patient with chronic hepatitis C shows activated Kupffer cells. In vitro infection of human Kupffer cells (KC) was performed to study their interaction with hepatitis C virus (HCV).
Methods:
KC, isolated by collagenase perfusion and centrifugal elutriation, were infected with various HCV positive sera. The presence of the viral genome was followed, at different times, quantitatively by a branched-DNA assay and qualitatively by reverse transcriptase-nested polymerase chain reaction. A strand-specific assay performed with the thermostable enzyme rTth was used to detect the synthesis of a negative replicative intermediate. Cytopathic effect was examined by electron microscopy. Production of cytokines and inducible nitric oxide synthase was evaluated in the supernatants.
Results:
Quantification of HCV-RNA showed that the level of viral RNA associated with KC after adsorption decreased rapidly. Genomic viral RNA disappeared within 5 days of infection. Negative-strand RNA was never detected in any of these experiments. No cytopathic effects could be detected at any time. KC did not produce inflammatory nor antiviral cytokines.
Conclusions:
Our results strongly suggest that primary cultures of KC are not permissive for HCV in vitro.
