Productive replication of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus in monocyte-derived dendritic cells modulates innate immune response

The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) closely resembled severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in disease manifestation as rapidly progressive acute pneumonia with multi-organ dysfunction. Using monocyte-derived-dendritic cells (Mo-DCs), we discovered fundamental discrepancies in the outcome of MERS‐CoV‐ and SARS-CoV-infection. First, MERS-CoV productively infected Mo-DCs while SARS-CoV-infection was abortive. Second, MERS-CoV induced significantly higher levels of IFN-γ, IP-10, IL-12, and RANTES expression than SARS-CoV. Third, MERS-CoV-infection induced higher surface expression of MHC class II (HLA-DR) and the co-stimulatory molecule CD86 than SARS-CoV-infection. Overall, our data suggests that the dendritic cell can serve as an important target of viral replication and a vehicle for dissemination. MERS-CoV-infection in DCs results in the production of a rich combination of cytokines and chemokines, and modulates innate immune response differently from that of SARS-CoV-infection. Our findings may help to explain the apparent discrepancy in the pathogenicity between MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV.