Umbilical cord blood derived microglia-like cells to model COVID-19 exposure
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Discuss this preprint
Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Microglia, the resident brain immune cells, play a critical role in normal brain development, and are impacted by the intrauterine environment, including maternal immune activation and inflammatory exposures. The COVID-19 pandemic presents a potential developmental immune challenge to the fetal brain, in the setting of maternal SARS-CoV-2 infection with its attendant potential for cytokine production and, in severe cases, cytokine storming. There is currently no biomarker or model for in utero microglial priming and function that might aid in identifying the neonates and children most vulnerable to neurodevelopmental morbidity, as microglia remain inaccessible in fetal life and after birth. This study aimed to generate patient-derived microglial-like cell models unique to each neonate from reprogrammed umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells, adapting and extending a novel methodology previously validated for adult peripheral blood mononuclear cells. We demonstrate that umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells can be used to create microglial-like cell models morphologically and functionally similar to microglia observed in vivo . We illustrate the application of this approach by generating microglia from cells exposed and unexposed to maternal SARS-CoV-2 infection. Our ability to create personalized neonatal models of fetal brain immune programming enables non-invasive insights into fetal brain development and potential childhood neurodevelopmental vulnerabilities for a range of maternal exposures, including COVID-19.
Article activity feed
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.07.329748: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: Ethical statement: This study was approved by the Partners Institutional Review Board.
Consent: Informed consent was obtained from all participants.Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Antibodies Sentences Resources Cells were incubated with primary antibodies in 5% FBS and 0.1% Triton-X overnight at 4°C (Anti-IBA1, 1:500 Anti-IBA1suggested: NoneSoftware and Algorithms Sentences Resources CellProfiler pipeline description and files are included in Supplemental Materials. CellProfilersuggested: NoneResults from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.07.329748: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: Ethical statement: This study was approved by the Partners Institutional Review Board.
Consent: Informed consent was obtained from all participants.Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Antibodies Sentences Resources Cells were incubated with primary antibodies in 5% FBS and 0.1% Triton-X overnight at 4°C (Anti-IBA1, 1:500 Anti-IBA1suggested: NoneSoftware and Algorithms Sentences Resources CellProfiler pipeline description and files are included in Supplemental Materials. CellProfilersuggested: NoneResults from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
-
