Human cervical carcinoma cell lines contain an antigen identical to the tumor-specific 75 kDa antigen of HeLa cells: detection by viral acquisition.

Purified vesicular stomatitis virus grown in the human cervical carcinoma HeLa cell line, VSV(HeLa), contains a 75 kDa tumor-specific antigen, detectable by immunoblotting of electrophoretically separated proteins with rabbit antiserum made against whole HeLa cells. Nearly identical results were obtained with VSV grown in the tumorigenic human hybrid ESH-5L cells, but not with the matched non-tumorigenic ESH-5E cells. Growth of VSV in 4 other independently isolated human cervical carcinoma cell lines led to the concentration of the same 75 kDa tumor-specific antigen by VSV. Infection of 2 other human cervical carcinoma cell lines did not lead to the detection of this antigen. The expression of the tumor-specific antigen correlated directly with the amount of RNA expression from human papillomavirus integrated in the DNA of these cells, irrespective of whether the papillomavirus was type 16 or 18.