ON THE MECHANISM OF THE ANTIVIRAL ACTIVITY OF ANTIVIRAL FACTOR OF NONINTERFERON NATURE

Antiviral factor (AF) of protein nature has been isolated from chick e mbryo fibroblasts infected with Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus. The suppression of virus reproduction has been observed both in homolo gous and heterologous cell cultures when the preparation was introduce d immediately after the adsorption of the virus after pretreatment of the cell monolayer. The study has demonstrated that the antiviral effe ct of AF is not linked with its IFN-alpha and TNF-alpha activity. Anal ysis of the results obtained in this study and earlier data contained in literature suggests that infected chick embryo fibroblasts release original cytokine of noninterferon nature with antiviral activity.