Recent studies with telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT)-immortalized human dermal fibroblasts established a persistence model for AdV, where IFN-I or IFN-II suppresses AdV-C5 infection by reducing the recruitment of the positive transcription regulator GABPα/β, and enhancing the E2F/Rb repressor complex on the E1A promoter sequence36. Here, TERT is linked to infection.