Volume 29, No 4, Apr 2019

ISSN: 1001-0602 
EISSN: 1748-7838 2018 
impact factor 17.848* 
(Clarivate Analytics, 2019)

Volume 29 Issue 4, April 2019: 261-262

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Anti-Zika virus RNAi in neural progenitor cells

Xuping Xie¹ and Pei-Yong Shi ¹

¹Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Sealy Center for Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics, Sealy Institute for Vaccine Sciences, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas 77555, USA
Correspondence: Pei-Yong Shi (peshi@utmb.edu)

Zika virus (ZIKV), a flavivirus that is primarily transmitted by mosquitoes, can cause devastating microcephaly and other congenital syndromes in infants born to infected pregnant women. In a recent paper in Cell Research, Xu et al. present data demonstrating that (i) ZIKV infection induces RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated antiviral defense in human neural progenitor cells and (ii) treatment with enoxacin, a broad-spectrum antibiotic with known RNAi-enhancing activity, prevents ZIKV infection and microcephalic defect in brain organoids.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41422-019-0158-3

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