Analysis of retinoblastoma for human adenovirus and human JC virus genome integration

Human adenovirus groups A and B have an oncogenic potential in newborn rodents. Especially, adenovirus type 12 is known to induce retinoblastoma-like tumor in baboons and transform human embryo retinoblast cells in vitro. Human JC virus is also known to produce a variety of tumors in newborn rodents, including retinoblastoma-like tumor. In this experiment, cell DNAs of human retinoblastomas were assayed for each of the transforming gene sequences of adenovirus groups A, B, C, D and E and for JC virus gene sequences, by using Southern blot hybridization. None of these viral gene sequences were detected at the level of 0.1-0.5 copy per diploid cell DNA in all of 11 retinoblastomas, including 6 retinoblastomas previously examined for adenovirus 12-transforming gene sequences. This led to a conclusion that most, if not all, adenoviruses and JC virus play no essential role in the etiology of human retinoblastoma, although there were experimental models of retinoblastoma induced by these viruses.