Differentiated human airway organoids to assess infectivity of emerging influenza virus

Zhou, Jie; Li, Cun; Sachs, Norman; Chiu, Man Chun; Wong, Bosco Ho-Yin; Chu, Hin; Poon, Vincent Kwok-Man; Wang, Dong; Zhao, Xiaoyu; Wen, Lei; Song, Wenjun; Yuan, Shuofeng; Wong, Kenneth Kak-Yuen; Chan, Jasper Fuk-Woo; To, Kelvin Kai-Wang; Chen, Honglin; Clevers, Hans; Yuen, Kwok-Yung

The avian IAV H7N2 subtype viruses have been circulating in the bird market from 1994-2006 and have caused poultry outbreaks in the United States. Sporadic human infections have been reported in the United States and Europe. Fortunately, all reported cases of human infection experienced mild influenzalike symptoms (24) . While pigs are considered the intermediate hosts for interspecies transmission of IAVs, swine influenza viruses lacking human adaptation markers rarely infect humans. Sporadic human infections documented in the literature or reported by public health officials are generally mild or subclinical (25) . The ability of the PD AOs to differentiate avian H7 subtype virus and swine H1 subtype virus from the counterpart human-infective viruses suggests that these models could be used to assess the cross-species transmission potential of emerging influenza viruses in humans. In this study, only four strains of virus were assessed in the differentiated AOs as a proof of concept. More virus strains should be evaluated to further understand the strengths and limitations of this PD AO model.