Comparative propagation and titration of lumpy skin disease virus on different cell cultures types

Lumpy skin disease virus is a member of the genus Capripoxvirus within the Poxviridae family that infects cattle and causes considerable economic losses. Providing a suitable cell culture for virus propagation is essential goal to be used for virus isolation and vaccine production. The present work deals with a novel cell culture, the ovine lamb heart (OLH), to investigate its benefit for LSDV propagation in comparison with the use of African green monkey kidney cells and Madin-Darby bovine kidney cell cultures. Ten serial passages of The Lumpy skin disease virus in each cell culture revealed a similar cytopathic effect recorded in the peak virus titer (6.0, 5.5, and 5.0 Log 10 TCID 50 /ml in OLH, Vero, and MDBK cell cultures, respectively) by the 6th day post-cell infection at the time of harvest of the highest titer by studying the virus growth curve in each cell culture. The virus neutralization test (VNT) and direct fluorescent antibody technique (FAT) using specific anti-LSDV sera confirmed the presence of all used cell cultures. Therefore, it was concluded that OLH cell culture is suitable for the propagation of LSDV, and more research is needed to evaluate its use for vaccine preparation.