Cytotoxicity of adenovirus‐antibody complexes. Specificity of antibody and virus‐antibody ratio at which cytotoxicity is induced

Adenoviruses aggregate in the presence of type‐specific antibodies against whole virus particles. These aggregates were found to damage human cells in vitro in far higher order of magnitude than virus alone, when virus and type‐specific antibodies were mixed at a certain virus‐antibody ratio. No cytotoxicity occurred when the virus was mixed with type‐specific antibodies in higher or lower dilutions or when the virus was incubated with antisera against another adenovirus serotype. Furthermore, it was found that the cytotoxicity could be prevented by type‐specific anti‐hexon sera and that type‐specific anti‐fiber sera produced cytotoxic aggregates out of subtoxic ones. The presence of the cytotoxic aggregates was demonstrated by electron microscopy and by ⁵¹Cr release cytotoxicity tests.