{"doi":"10.1128/jvi.02024-20","title":"Zika Virus Is Transmitted in Neural Progenitor Cells via Cell-to-Cell Spread, and Infection Is Inhibited by the Autophagy Inducer Trehalose","abstract":"Zika virus causes birth defects and can lead to neurological disease in adults. While infection rates are currently low, ZIKV remains a public health concern with no treatment or vaccine available. Targeting a cellular pathway to inhibit viral replication is a potential treatment strategy that avoids development of antiviral resistance. We demonstrate in this study that the non-toxic autophagy-inducing disaccharide trehalose reduces spread and output of ZIKV in infected neural progenitor cells (NPCs), the major cells infected in the fetus. We show that ZIKV spreads cell-to-cell in NPCs as an infectious center and that NPCs are more permissive to infection by contact with infected cells than by cell-free virus. We find that neutralizing antibody does not prevent the spread of the infection in NPCs. These results are significant in demonstrating anti-ZIKV activity of trehalose and in clarifying the primary means of Zika virus spread in clinically relevant target cells.","journal":"Journal of Virology","year":2020,"id":87169,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":12,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.959,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":227799,"name":"Zhe Zhu","orcid":"0000-0002-5385-948X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":27348,"name":"Florian Krach","orcid":"0000-0002-4506-8792","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":88695,"name":"Jeremy N. Rich","orcid":"0000-0001-7845-5302","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":43290,"name":"G Yeo","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":443651,"name":"Deborah H. Spector","orcid":"0000-0002-7605-6348","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":249772,"name":"Alex E. Clark","orcid":"0000-0003-1687-416X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":74,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:59:31.247492Z","pmid":"33328307","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}