title: Development of high-content imaging assays for lethal viral pathogens.
abstract: Filoviruses such as Ebola (EBOV) and Marburg (MARV) are single-stranded negative sense RNA viruses that cause acute hemorrhagic fever with high mortality rates. Currently, there are no licensed vaccines or therapeutics to counter filovirus infections in humans. The development of higher throughput/high-content primary screening assays followed by validation using the low-throughput traditional plaque or real-time PCR assays will greatly aid efforts toward the discovery of novel antiviral therapeutics. Specifically, high-content imaging technology is increasingly being applied for primary drug screening. In this study, the authors describe the challenges encountered when optimizing bioassays based on image acquisition and analyses for the highly pathogenic filoviruses Ebola and Marburg. A number of biological and imaging-related variables such as plating density, multiplicity of infection, the number of fields scanned per well, fluorescence intensity, and the cell number analyzed were evaluated during the development of these assays. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate the benefits related to the statistical analyses of single-cell data to account for heterogeneity in the subcellular localization and whole-cell integrated intensity of the viral antigen staining pattern. In conclusion, they show that image-based methods represent powerful screening tools for identifying antiviral compounds for highly pathogenic viruses.
authors.affiliation: United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, Frederick, MD, USA. rekha.panchal@amedd.army.mil
authors.forename: Rekha G
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Panchal
authors.forename: Krishna P
authors.initials: KP
authors.lastname: Kota
authors.forename: Kevin B
authors.initials: KB
authors.lastname: Spurgers
authors.forename: Gordon
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ruthel
authors.forename: Julie P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Tran
authors.forename: Robert C Dutch
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Boltz
authors.forename: Sina
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bavari
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000998:Antiviral Agents / Q000032:analysis / Q000494:pharmacology; D001331:Automation; D002522:Chlorocebus aethiops; D029043:Ebolavirus / Q000302:isolation & purification* / Q000502:physiology; D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D019142:Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / Q000821:virology; D057166:High-Throughput Screening Assays / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D008379:Marburg Virus Disease / Q000821:virology; D029024:Marburgvirus / Q000302:isolation & purification* / Q000502:physiology; D014709:Vero Cells; D014779:Virus Replication
chemical_list: D000998:Antiviral Agents; C485184:enhanced green fluorescent protein; D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins