But with αvβ5, blocking it with an antibody almost completely blocked the ability of the virus to infect brain cancer stem cells and normal brain stem cells.” You might as well be putting water on a cell. Researcher Jeremy Rich describes the results: “When we blocked other integrins, there was no difference. In the second experiment, which was published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, the scientists used one specific antibody against each of the many integrins to find out which inhibitor would act most powerfully. Therefore, we believe that αvβ5 is the key contributor to Zika's ability to infect brain cells.” Study Two When we further examined αvβ5 expression in brain, it made perfect sense because αvβ5 is the only integrin member enriched in neural stem cells, which Zika preferentially infects.
But instead we found Zika uses αvβ5, which is unique. Researcher Tariq Rana explains, “I was expecting to find Zika using multiple integrins, or other cell surface molecules also used by other viruses. Women with a history of preeclampsia have increased markers of brain cell damage, inflammation.Drugs with antiviral activity against monkeypox virus.Newly developed nanobodies could eventually be used to treat neurocognitive disorders.This is because it is the only integrin that occurs at high levels in brain stem cells - the very cells that are most readily infected by the virus. However, among the crowd, the αvβ5 integrin-encoding gene attracted a lot of attention. The experiment showed that the Zika virus requires not less than 92 separate human genes found in brain cancer stem cells to enter and replicate within brain cells. The virus was labelled with green fluorescent protein (GFP) to make its detection easier following infection. This enabled them to detect the key genes and encoded proteins for viral entry into the cell. Each of the mutant cell cultures was exposed to the Zika virus to see how it responded.
Glioblastomas are particularly nasty brain cancers. The first approach, published in the journal Cell Reports, was by systematically deleting genes one by one from cultured human glioblastoma cells in a 3D culture.
This pair of studies offer the first proof that the αvβ5 integrin is involved in enabling infection by the Zika virus. Many other integrins have already been found to offer weak points through which adenoviruses, foot-and-mouth disease viruses and rotaviruses sneak into the cells to cause infections. These molecules are therefore also involved in the loss of cell adherence and abnormal cell signalling that occurs in spreading cancer, where cells lose their mooring and travel from their host organ to a distant location to proliferate in an uncontrolled fashion and produce a metastatic growth. They are essential for helping cells adhere to each other and to underlying fascia or tissue, and in facilitating cell-cell communication. Integrins are molecules that are found within the cell membranes bounding the different cells of the body. Image Credit: Kateryna Kon / Shutterstock Integrins – what are they? Zika virus in blood with red blood cells, a virus which causes Zika fever found in Brazil and other tropical countries. What they found was that the Zika virus uses a molecule called αvβ5 integrin to enter the brain stem cells. There is no cure for this infection, and scientists have been studying how the virus makes its entry into brain cells in order to develop a preventive and therapeutic strategy.Īs part of such research, two different teams at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine approached the question in two different ways but came up with the same answer in a surprising meeting. Transmitted through mosquito bites, it also spreads from pregnant mothers to the babies in the womb, and through sexual intercourse, putting half the world’s people at risk as a result. In 2019, Zika infection hit Europe for the first time. An epidemic affected several areas of the world in 2014-15, especially in South America. The Zika virus causes an infection that can seriously impair the development of the fetal brain. Image Credit: UC San Diego Health Sciences What is Zika virus? Right: infected with Zika virus and treated with cilengitide, which protects the cells from destruction by the virus.
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