Human iPS cell-derived sensory neurons can be infected by SARS-CoV-2

Anthony Flamier; Punam Bisht; Alexsia Richards; Danielle L Tomasello; Rudolf Jaenisch

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.107690

Human iPS cell-derived sensory neurons can be infected by SARS-CoV-2

iScience. 2023 Aug 19;26(9):107690. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107690. eCollection 2023 Sep 15.

Authors

Anthony Flamier¹, Punam Bisht¹, Alexsia Richards¹, Danielle L Tomasello¹, Rudolf Jaenisch^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, MA, USA.
² Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Abstract

COVID-19 has impacted billions of people since 2019 and unfolded a major healthcare crisis. With an increasing number of deaths and the emergence of more transmissible variants, it is crucial to better understand the biology of the disease-causing virus, the SARS-CoV-2. Peripheral neuropathies appeared as a specific COVID-19 symptom occurring at later stages of the disease. In order to understand the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on the peripheral nervous system, we generated human sensory neurons from induced pluripotent stem cells that we infected with the SARS-CoV-2 strain WA1/2020 and the variants delta and omicron. Using single-cell RNA sequencing, we found that human sensory neurons can be infected by SARS-CoV-2 but are unable to produce infectious viruses. Our data indicate that sensory neurons can be infected by the original WA1/2020 strain of SARS-CoV-2 as well as the delta and omicron variants, yet infectability differs between the original strain and the variants.

Keywords: Cellular neuroscience; Neuroscience; Virology.

Abstract

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