Cell Research: For the first time, evidence of a new coronavirus has been found to infect human nerve progenitor cells and brain-like organs.

As of July 16, Xinguan pneumonia has resulted in 13 million confirmed cases and more than 580,045 deaths in 218 countries and regions.
the new coronavirus mainly causes respiratory diseases, its clinical manifestations are similar to SARS.
, however, patients with new coronary pneumonia also often report neurological symptoms, including headaches, insomnia, aphasia, confusion, seizures and encephalopathy.
clinical study of 214 patients with new coronary pneumonia in Wuhan City found that 36.4% of patients showed neurological symptoms, and the proportion was as high as 45.5% among patients with severe infections.
, a French study showed that up to 84.5 per cent (49/58) of new patients admitted to hospital with neurological symptoms were detected.
in addition, a recent Study in Germany showed that 36.4% (8/22) of RNA in severe cases of brain biopsy could detect the new coronavirus.
these indications suggest that the human brain may be one of the targets beyond the new crown virus infection of the lungs.
However, prior to this study, no direct experimental evidence of infection of the human central nervous system (CNS) was found.
August 4, 2020, the latest research results of the University of Hong Kong Medical School, in collaboration with the Institute of Synthetic Biology of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, were published online in the form of Letter to Editor by SARS-CoV-2 infects human neural progenitor and cells brainorganoids on Cell Cell.
the work is the first to find evidence of a new coronavirus infection of human neuroprogenocytes (hNPCs) and brain-like organs. The first author of the
thesis is Dr. Zhang Baozhong of Shenzhen Advanced Institute of Synthesis, and the co-first author is Dr. Zhu Xuan, Dr. Han Shuo and Dr. Shuai Huiping of the Hong Kong University Medical College, and the communication authors are Professor Huang Jiandong, Dr. Zhu Xuan and Professor Yuan Guoyong.
the study explores the processes of the central nervous system directly involved in physiologically related models using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC)-derived human neuroprogenocytes, nerve spheres, and brain organs as infection models.
experimental results show that iPSC-derived nerve progenitor cells can effectively infect the new coronavirus, while sars virus, which is also a coronavirus, cannot be infected.
detected a large number of neo-coronavirus nucleoprotein expression and infectious viral particles in the nerve spheres and brain-like organs infected with the new coronavirus, which show editing that the new coronavirus can effectively infect the human brain.
important, the study was the first to find that the new coronavirus infection in brain-like organs can be located in the positive cell regions of TUJ1 (neuron markers) and NESTIN (neuroprogenocell markers), suggesting that the new coronavirus can target infected cortical neurons and neuroprogenitus cells.
a second outbreak of the Zika virus in 2015 has been recognized as targeting neuroprogenial cells in the human brain, leading to microcephaly and severe developmental defects in the fetus, as well as other neurological abnormalities in adults.
therefore, the chronic or long-term consequences of the new coronavirus infection of the central nervous system should be closely monitored.
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