Focus-on-Virus
In this Focus-on-Virus consortium, five research groups from the Amsterdam UMC and two industrial partners (uniQure and Viroclinics) brought in means and expertise on gut and brain organoid technology, virus infections and immunology to develop innovative complex gut-brain organoid models for picornaviruses and HIV infection. We showed for the first-time in-depth studies on how virus infections in the gut are connected to pathogenicity in the brain and provide tools to develop cures for these devastating infections.
In Work package 1, we have established picornavirus and HIV infection using the gut and brain organoid system separately. In Work package 2 we developed blood-brain-barrier systems consisting of endothelial cell co-cultures. We established infection with picornavirus and established hiv infection of microglia embedded brain organoids. We aggregated expertise of the partners to combine these separate models into one complex gut-brain organoid model in Work package 3. We used this model for picornavirus and HIV infection. Within the consortium we unraveled molecular targets and mechanisms to unravel novel on treatment strategies for the yet incurable human picornavirus and HIV infections.
