Abstract
Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a re-emerging mosquito-borne alphavirus that has been spread worldwide. The dissemination of this virus is a threat to human health since there is no approved vaccine or appropriate antiviral agents to control viral infection. The global expansion of the virus is preceded by biting of infected Aedes mosquitos, which injects saliva containing the virus into the skin of the human host. Searching for effective antiviral compounds and understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in host-virus or vector-virus-host interactions are crucial for controlling viral spread.Using different molecular and cellular strategies, we demonstrated that the FDA approved drug, imipramine, which has the capability to disturb intracellular cholesterol transport inhibits CHIKV replication in human skin fibroblasts. Imipramine was found to affect both the fusion and replication steps of the viral life cycle. Moreover, it also strongly inhibited the replication of several Flaviviridae family members, including Zika, West Nile and Dengue virus. We have also determined the global proteomic profile of Chikungunya and Zika virus infected human skin fibroblasts, and found that several interferon-stimulated proteins and antiviral response proteins are significantly up-regulated in the infected cells. More importantly, our results also provided for the first time a role of SAMHD1 in arbovirus infection of human skin fibroblasts. Finally, we demonstrated that Aedes aegypti saliva enhances CHIKV replication in human skin fibroblasts. To our knowledge, this is the first report showing the importance of Aedes aegypti saliva on promoting CHIKV infection via down regulation of the genes involving type I IFN secretion in the infected human cutaneous cells.