ZIKA BRAIN DAMAGE: Scientists figure out how Zika Virus destroys healthy brain growth

BALTIMORE — Leave it to the youngest person in the lab to think of the Big Idea.

Xuyu Qian, 23, a third-year graduate student at Johns Hopkins, was chatting in late January with Hongjun Song, a neurologist.

Scientist near discovery on Zika Virus

Song was wondering how to test their three-dimensional model of a brain — well, not a brain, exactly, but an ‘‘organoid,’’ essentially a tiny ball of brain cells, grown from stem cells and mimicking early brain development.

‘‘We need a disease,’’ Song said.

Qian tossed out something he’d seen in the headlines: ‘‘Why don’t we check out this Zika virus?"

Within a few weeks, that suggestion led to one of the most significant findings in efforts to answer a central question: How does the Zika virus cause brain damage, including the abnormally small heads in babies born to infected mothers?

The answer could spur discoveries to prevent such devastating neurological problems. And time is of the essence. One year after the virus was first confirmed in Latin America, with the raging crisis likely to reach the United States this summer, no treatment or vaccine exists.

‘‘We can’t wait,’’ said Song, at the university’s Institute for Cell Engineering, where he and his wife and research partner, Dr. Guo-Li Ming, provided a pipette-and-petri-dish-level tour. ‘‘To translate our work for the clinic, to the public, normally it takes years. This is a case where we can make a difference right away."

The laboratory’s initial breakthrough, published in March with researchers at two other universities, showed that the Zika virus attacked and killed so-called neural progenitor cells, which form early in fetal development and generate neurons in the brain. more