Intracranial Administration of P Gene siRNA Protects Mice from Lethal Chandipura Virus Encephalitis

Kumar, Satyendra; Arankalle, Vidya A.

For the siRNA dosing yielding optimum protection (2 doses, 24hr apart) additional parameters were evaluated. Daily monitoring of CHPV titers in the brain by real time one step RT-PCR (Fig 8) clearly showed 4logs reduction in mice treated with P-2 siRNA when compared to ncsiRNA treated controls. Histopathological analysis demonstrated that P-2 siRNA treated mice brains did not exhibit common features of viral encephalitis seen exclusively in the control group (Fig 9) . In order to prove that Figure 9 . Histopathology of mice brain treated with P-2 siRNA. Hematoxylin and eosin-stained vertical brain sections from control mice treated with ncsiRNA and infected with CHPV (a, b) and P-2 siRNA treated mice on 5 th day PI (c, d) at indicated magnifications. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0008615.g009 the protection offered was indeed due to siRNA, we screened sera of survived mice at 7, 14 and 21 days after infection for the presence of anti-CHP-IgG antibodies. Absence of such antibodies demonstrated limited / no viral replication leading to no development of humoral response (Data not shown).