Division of Virology, IVRI, Mukteswar-263 138, India.
Abstracts of the papers presented at the XVIII National Conference of Indian Virological Society at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India, December 11–13, 2008.
Viruses exhibit varying degree of thermolability at different storage temperatures and stabilization conditions. Stabilization of viruses using sugars and/or amino acids and divalent cations has been reported to offer varying degree of thermo-resistance at various storage temperatures. The crystallization property of stabilizing agents and freeze drying procedures also affect stability of the stabilized virus preparations. The freezing characteristics of stabilizers are of great importance for optimizing the freeze drying process and consequently virus stability. Thermolability after reconstitution of the freeze dried viral preparations is also a concern for most of the viruses. Thus, it is evident that selection of most effective (or suitable) stabilizers, freeze drying conditions optimal for a virus and, reconstitution buffers are important considerations for long-term storage, transportation and use of the viral vaccine under field conditions or other viral preparations under extended time of handling in laboratory settings. A number of sugars, amino acids and divalent cations have been used as stabilizers for viral preparations. Of late, deuterium has also been exploited as stabilizer. Deuterium has been assessed for its stabilization effect on polio virus vaccine and yellow fever vaccines viruses. Deuterium also provides protects biomolecules, living cells and simple multicellular organisms from hyperthermia by preventing the denaturation of proteins and/or nucleic acids. More recently, stabilization property of deuterium has been demonstrated with polio virus vaccine and yellow fever vaccine viruses. In this paper, we explore the possibility if deuterium can be used more widely in preservation of more vaccine viruses and other biological samples including (i) clinical tissues samples meant for histopathology, immuno-histochemistry, in situ PCR and in situ hybridization and, (ii) clinical samples in the form of body fluids (secretions and excretions) intended for virus isolation, antigen detection, nucleic acid detection or electron microscopy.
