CellInsight CX7 in Infectious Disease and Neuroscience Research
Curated literature review of peer-reviewed infectious-disease and neuroscience studies that used the CellInsight CX7 High-Content Screening Platform. Each paper is summarised by cell type, imaging technique, and disease area, with links to Google Scholar and PubMed. Plankton & Zoom does not host paywalled content.
The CellInsight CX7 platform is used for high-content screening of infection models and neuronal phenotypes, from viral entry and replication assays to iPSC-derived neurodegeneration models. The papers below highlight multi-well, multi-channel imaging for virology, immunology, and neuroscience.
BRD1 haploinsufficiency alters early neuronal programming and disrupts maturation in human induced glutamatergic neurons.
Cell type: stem cells, neurons
Imaging technique: high-content imaging
Disease area: virology, bacterial infection
BRD1 is an epigenetic regulator implicated in neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, yet its role in human neuronal differentiation, maturation, and function remains poorly understood. Here we show that BRD1 haploinsufficiency disrupts early neuronal programming, resulting in accelerated maturation and altered neurodevelopmental trajectories in human induced glutamatergic neurons. Transcriptomic profiling reveals an early shift toward neuronal identity, characterized by downregulation of ...
Research square — 2026 — PMID 41756449
Google Scholar | PubMed | DOI
Abnormal Lipid Signaling Characterizes Diastolic Dysfunction in Pediatric Cardiomyopathy.
Cell type: stem cells, iPSCs, fibroblasts
Imaging technique: high-content imaging, confocal microscopy
Disease area: infectious disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disease
Pediatric cardiomyopathy is a major cause of diastolic heart failure; yet, its mechanisms remain unclear. Global myocardial transcriptomic and blood lipidomic profiling revealed a distinct metabolic signature of diastolic dysfunction marked by dysregulated lipid signaling. A machine learning model using these gene markers accurately classified diastolic dysfunction across cardiomyopathy subtypes. Lipidomic changes included excess saturated lipids and impaired oxidation that correlated with myoca...
JACC. Basic to translational science — 2026 — PMID 41707622
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Comparative lipidomics of iPSC-derived microglia protocols reveal lipid droplet and immune differences mediated by media composition.
Cell type: stem cells, iPSCs, fibroblasts, macrophages, neurons
Imaging technique: confocal microscopy
Disease area: Alzheimer's disease, virology, inflammation
Altered microglial lipid metabolism is heavily implicated in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and aging. Recently, protocols were developed to generate human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived microglia-like cells (iMGL) to study microglial function in vitro, including embryoid body-based methods and induced transcription factor (iTF)-dependent approaches. Here, we performed comparative lipidomics on iMGL from these methods and report major differences in multiple lipid classes, including triglycerid...
Stem cell reports — 2026 — PMID 41512865
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Functional implications of polygenic risk for schizophrenia in human neurons.
Cell type: stem cells, iPSCs, fibroblasts, neurons
Imaging technique: high-content imaging
Disease area: Alzheimer's disease, infectious disease, virology, diabetes, inflammation
Genome wide association studies of schizophrenia reveal a complex polygenic risk architecture comprised of hundreds of risk variants; most are common in the population, non-coding, and act by genetically regulating the expression of one or more gene targets ("eGenes"). It remains unclear how the myriad genetic variants that are predicted to confer individually small effects combine to yield substantial clinical impacts in aggregate. Here, we demonstrate that convergence (i.e., the shared downstr...
Nature communications — 2026 — PMID 41519853
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Dynamic neuro-immune regulation of psychiatric risk loci in human neurons.
Cell type: stem cells, iPSCs, fibroblasts, macrophages, neurons, epithelial cells
Imaging technique: fluorescence microscopy
Disease area: Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, infectious disease, virology, bacterial infection, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, inflammation
The prenatal environment influences neurodevelopment and subsequent clinical trajectories for psychiatric outcomes in childhood and adolescence. Yet it remains unclear if the impact of maternal and fetal immune activation varies with distinct polygenic risk profiles. Therefore, here we catalogue genotype and environment (GxE) interactions, contrasting allele-specific regulatory activity between inflammatory contexts. We report a cue-specific neuronal massively parallel reporter assay (MPRA) of 2...
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology — 2025 — PMID 39026810
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Uncovering plaque-glia niches in human Alzheimer's disease brains using spatial transcriptomics.
Cell type: stem cells, iPSCs, neurons, endothelial cells
Imaging technique: fluorescence microscopy, high-content imaging, brightfield microscopy
Disease area: Alzheimer's disease, inflammation
BACKGROUND: Amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaques and their associated glial responses are hallmark features of Alzheimer's disease (AD), yet their interactions within the human brain remain poorly defined. METHODS: We applied spatial transcriptomics (ST) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) to 78 postmortem brain sections from 21 individuals in the Religious Orders Study and Memory and Aging Project (ROSMAP). We paired ST with histological data and stratified spots into major categories of plaque-glia niches bas...
Molecular neurodegeneration advances — 2025 — PMID 40740481
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High-throughput High Content Quantification of HIV-1 Viral Infectious Output.
Cell type: HEK293 cells, primary cells, macrophages
Imaging technique: high-content imaging, confocal microscopy
Disease area: infectious disease, virology, cardiovascular disease, inflammation, drug screening
Infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) remains a global health issue and still drives the development of significant pathology and various comorbidities. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) can effectively suppress viral replication but is often initiated months or years after initial infection, leaving a substantial period in which viral replication progresses unchecked. While ART suppresses HIV-1 replication, it does not prohibit the development of HIV-1-associated comorbidities, highlig...
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology — 2025 — PMID 40631301
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Polyalanine Expansion in PABPN1 Alters the Structure and Dynamics of Its Nuclear Aggregates in Differentiated Muscle Cells.
Cell type: HeLa cells, stem cells, neurons
Imaging technique: live-cell imaging, high-content imaging, confocal microscopy
Disease area: Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, virology
Intracellular protein aggregation is a hallmark of aging and contributes to pathology in some age-associated diseases. In hereditary adult-onset neuromuscular diseases (NMDs), protein aggregates play a key role in disease onset and progression. The wild-type Poly(A) binding protein nuclear 1 (PABPN1) forms benign nuclear aggregates, whereas a short trinucleotide expansion leads to the formation of pathogenic aggregates, a hallmark of Oculopharyngeal Muscular Dystrophy (OPMD). In OPMD, the mutant...
FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology — 2025 — PMID 40552959
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Microfluidic-Chip-Based Formulation and In Vivo Evaluations of Squalene Oil Emulsion Adjuvants for Subunit Vaccines.
Cell type: epithelial cells
Imaging technique: high-content imaging
Disease area: infectious disease, virology, COVID-19
BACKGROUND: Adjuvants play a crucial role in improving the immunogenicity of various antigens in vaccines. Squalene-in-water emulsions are clinically established vaccine adjuvants that improve immune responses, particularly during a pandemic. Current manufacturing processes for these emulsion adjuvants include microfluidizers and homogenizers and these processes have been used to produce emulsion adjuvants to meet global demands during a pandemic. These processes, however, are complex and expens...
Vaccines — 2024 — PMID 39772005
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High-Content Imaging-Based Assay for SARS-CoV-2-Neutralizing Antibodies.
Cell type: HEK293 cells
Imaging technique: high-content imaging
Disease area: infectious disease, virology, COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern necessitates the determination of populational serum potency against the virus. Here, we standardized and validated an imaging-based method to quantify neutralizing antibodies against lentiviral particles expressing the spike glycoprotein (pseudovirus). This method was found to efficiently quantify viral titers based on ZsGreen-positive cells and detect changes in human serum neutralization capacity induced ...
Vaccines — 2024 — PMID 38543870
Google Scholar | PubMed | DOI
ADAR1 Biology Can Hinder Effective Antiviral RNA Interference.
Cell type: HEK293 cells, A549 lung cancer cells, stem cells, fibroblasts, neurons, epithelial cells
Imaging technique: fluorescence microscopy, high-content imaging
Disease area: infectious disease, virology
Viruses constantly evolve and adapt to the antiviral defenses of their hosts. The biology of viral circumvention of these selective pressures can often be attributed to the acquisition of novel antagonistic gene products or by rapid genome change that prevents host recognition. To study viral evasion of RNA interference (RNAi)-based defenses, we established a robust antiviral system in mammalian cells using recombinant Sendai virus designed to be targeted by endogenous host microRNAs (miRNAs) wi...
Journal of virology — 2023 — PMID 37017521
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Structurally and Morphologically Distinct Pathological Tau Assemblies Differentially Affect GVB Accumulation.
Cell type: neurons
Imaging technique: live-cell imaging, high-content imaging, confocal microscopy, Z-stack imaging
Disease area: Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, virology
Tau aggregation is central to the pathogenesis of a large group of neurodegenerative diseases termed tauopathies, but it is still unclear in which way neurons respond to tau pathology and how tau accumulation leads to neurodegeneration. A striking neuron-specific response to tau pathology is presented by granulovacuolar degeneration bodies (GVBs), lysosomal structures that accumulate specific cargo in a dense core. Here we employed different tau aggregation models in primary neurons to investiga...
International journal of molecular sciences — 2023 — PMID 37446051
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Electroactive Materials Surface Charge Impacts Neuron Viability and Maturation in 2D Cultures.
Cell type: SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells, stem cells, neurons
Imaging technique: high-content imaging, confocal microscopy
Disease area: Alzheimer's disease
Since neurons were first cultured outside a living organism more than a century ago, a number of experimental techniques for their in vitro maintenance have been developed. These methods have been further adapted and refined to study specific neurobiological processes under controlled experimental conditions. Despite their limitations, the simplicity and visual accessibility of 2D cultures have enabled the study of the effects of trophic factors, adhesion molecules, and biophysical stimuli on ne...
ACS applied materials & interfaces — 2023 — PMID 37345791
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Non-additive effects of schizophrenia risk genes reflect convergent downstream function.
Cell type: stem cells, iPSCs, neurons
Imaging technique: high-content imaging
Disease area: Alzheimer's disease, infectious disease, virology, diabetes, inflammation
Genetic studies of schizophrenia (SCZ) reveal a complex polygenic risk architecture comprised of hundreds of risk variants, the majority of which are common in the population at-large and confer only modest increases in disorder risk. Precisely how genetic variants with individually small predicted effects on gene expression combine to yield substantial clinical impacts in aggregate is unclear. Towards this, we previously reported that the combinatorial perturbation of four SCZ risk genes ("eGen...
medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences — 2023 — PMID 36993466
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Tecovirimat is effective against human monkeypox virus in vitro at nanomolar concentrations.
Cell type: HeLa cells
Imaging technique: high-content imaging
Disease area: infectious disease, virology, bacterial infection
The ongoing monkeypox virus (MPXV) outbreak is the largest ever recorded outside of Africa. We isolated and sequenced a virus from the first clinical MPXV case diagnosed in France (May 2022). We report that tecovirimat (ST-246), a US Food and Drug Administration approved drug, is efficacious against this isolate in vitro at nanomolar concentrations, whereas cidofovir is only effective at micromolar concentrations. Our results support the use of tecovirimat in ongoing human clinical trials.
Nature microbiology — 2022 — PMID 36344621
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Sterol dysregulation in Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome causes astrocyte immune reactivity through microglia crosstalk.
Cell type: stem cells, macrophages, neurons
Imaging technique: live-cell imaging, high-content imaging
Disease area: Alzheimer's disease, inflammation
Owing to the need for de novo cholesterol synthesis and cholesterol-enriched structures within the nervous system, cholesterol homeostasis is critical to neurodevelopment. Diseases caused by genetic disruption of cholesterol biosynthesis, such as Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome, which is caused by mutations in 7-dehydrocholesterol reductase (DHCR7), frequently result in broad neurological deficits. Although astrocytes regulate multiple neural processes ranging from cell migration to network-level com...
Disease models & mechanisms — 2022 — PMID 36524414
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Granulovacuolar degeneration bodies are independently induced by tau and α-synuclein pathology.
Cell type: HeLa cells, HEK293 cells, iPSCs, neurons
Imaging technique: high-content imaging, confocal microscopy, Z-stack imaging
Disease area: Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, virology
BACKGROUND: Granulovacuolar degeneration bodies (GVBs) are intracellular vesicular structures that commonly accompany pathological tau accumulations in neurons of patients with tauopathies. Recently, we developed the first model for GVBs in primary neurons, that requires exogenous tau seeds to elicit tau aggregation. This model allowed the identification of GVBs as proteolytically active lysosomes induced by tau pathology. GVBs selectively accumulate cargo in a dense core, that shows differentia...
Alzheimer's research & therapy — 2022 — PMID 36517915
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Modeling gene × environment interactions in PTSD using human neurons reveals diagnosis-specific glucocorticoid-induced gene expression.
Cell type: stem cells, iPSCs, fibroblasts, neurons, keratinocytes, endothelial cells
Imaging technique: fluorescence microscopy
Disease area: Alzheimer's disease, infectious disease, virology, inflammation, drug screening
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can develop following severe trauma, but the extent to which genetic and environmental risk factors contribute to individual clinical outcomes is unknown. Here, we compared transcriptional responses to hydrocortisone exposure in human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived glutamatergic neurons and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from combat veterans with PTSD (n = 19 hiPSC and n = 20 PBMC donors) and controls (n = 20 hiPSC and n = 20 PBMC ...
Nature neuroscience — 2022 — PMID 36266471
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