We made sensory neurons from human stem cells and infected with the COVID19 virus. We are interested in studying how the virus can travel into the brain. The virus was found to infect non-neuronal cells, what are known as glia, yet we found that when the neuronal culture is infected, they have a different response compared to brain neurons. This indicated a higher inflammatory response to viral infection.

This ganglion image (no infection) was stained with markers for sensory neurons, TrkB (green) TrkC (red), and ACE2 receptor that virus binds to (magenta) with DAPI.