An In Vitro Assay for Screening Interferons as Potent Inhibitors of Zika Virus Growth

Six hours after seeding a 12-well plate with naïve Vero cells, add cytokines of interest at indicated concentrations in biological duplicates. 12 hours post-treatment, perform Zika virus infection, and include negative control wells without infection. Four hours after infection, replace the viral inoculum with cytokine-treated medium, and then incubate the cells at 37 degree Celsius for an additional 44 hours. At 48 hours post-infection, count viral plaques using a phase-contrast microscope, and acquire representative images of infected cells at 40x magnification.