Chikungunya virus live-cell reporter systems reveal cell-type-dependent antiviral responses to ribavirin

Ribavirin potently inhibits Chikungunya virus replication in transformed cell lines, but its antiviral activity is markedly diminished in primary human skeletal muscle myoblasts and dermal fibroblasts.

• Why it matters: Antiviral discovery for CHIKV is constrained by systems that lack mechanistic resolution and often use transformed lines with uncertain physiological relevance.
• What they did: The study built live-cell CHIKV reporter systems using a dual-fluorescent subgenomic replicon and fluorescent infectious viruses to track early replication versus downstream structural gene expression in real time.
• The result: Ribavirin-mediated inhibition was rescued by guanosine but not inosine and was mimicked by mycophenolic acid, consistent with guanine nucleotide depletion, yet this pathway was substantially less effective in primary human cells.

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