Christy Hammack

TL;DR: A miniaturized spinning bioreactor (SpinΩ) is developed to generate forebrain-specific organoids from human iPSCs that recapitulate key features of human cortical development, including progenitor zone organization, neurogenesis, gene expression, and, notably, a distinct human-specific outer radial glia cell layer.

TL;DR: It is shown that a strain of the ZIKV, MR766, serially passaged in monkey and mosquito cells efficiently infects human neural progenitor cells (hNPCs) derived from induced pluripotent stem cells, identified as a direct ZikV target, and reveals transcriptional dysregulation, notably of cell-cycle-related pathways.

TL;DR: A pan-caspase inhibitor, emricasan, inhibited ZIKV-induced increases in caspase-3 activity and protected human cortical neural progenitors in both monolayer and three-dimensional organoid cultures, and combination treatments using one compound from each category (neuroprotective and antiviral) further increased protection of human neural progensitors and astrocytes from ZIKv-induced cell death.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors systematically profiled transcriptomes of human neural progenitor cells exposed to Asian ZIKVC, African ZIKVM, and dengue virus (DENV) and found that ZIKV has a more selective and larger impact on expression of genes involved in DNA replication and repair.

TL;DR: The mechanism by which ZikV manipulates the cell cycle in hNPCs and the functional consequence of cell cycle perturbation on the replication of ZIKV and related flaviviruses are investigated.