Objective:

Investigate how Zika virus damages the developing eye and assess potential treatments to protect infants from retinal injury and vision impairment.

Approach:

• Funding and leadership: The NIH awarded UCLA-led researchers a four-year, $2.7 million grant. The project is led by Vaithi Arumugaswami of UCLA and Ashok Kumar of Wayne State University.
• Experimental models: Researchers will study Zika-related eye damage in laboratory-grown retinal pigment epithelium cells, human stem cell-derived retinal organoids, and newborn mice infected with Zika.
• Treatment assessment: The team will test previously identified antiviral compounds for their ability to prevent or reduce retinal damage in newborn mice and assess whether they disrupt normal retinal development.

Key Findings:

• Prior work identified interactions between Zika proteins and host proteins involved in eye development and cellular energy regulation.
• Reducing levels of several identified host proteins increased viral replication in experiments.
• Screening thousands of compounds identified candidates that inhibited Zika infection; initial experiments in adult mice suggested some could reduce ocular damage.
• The article reports that some candidate compounds may also inhibit dengue and West Nile viruses in early laboratory investigations.

Interpretation:

The new grant supports further preclinical investigation of Zika-related retinal damage and candidate treatments. The source states that additional research is needed to establish the compounds’ safety, efficacy, and suitability for human trials.

Limitations:

• The reported treatment evidence is preliminary and includes laboratory studies and initial experiments in adult mice.
• The compounds have not been established as safe or effective for human use.
• The source does not report results from the newly funded research.

Conclusion:

The project will examine Zika’s effects on developing retinal tissue and test whether candidate antivirals can limit damage without interfering with normal retinal development.

Sources:

• UCLA Health