Amy Rosenfeld PhD

Amy B. Rosenfeld received her Ph.D. in virology in the laboratory of Dr. Vincent Racaniello at Columbia University, where she established a genetic screen to identify the cellular proteins required for translation of hepatitis C virus mRNA. As a post-doctoral fellow at McGill University, she combined both genetics and biochemical approaches to investigate the diseases that develop when translation of cellular messenger RNAs (mRNAs) is altered, including viral pathogenesis, as the components of the innate immune system are translationally controlled. In 2014, she returned to the Racaniello laboratory to initiate studies on enterovirus D68, building on the laboratory’s expertise in research on picornaviruses, to identify the cellular receptor for virus attachment and cell entry. These studies facilitated the development of an in vitro system using organotypic brain slice cultures and purified astrocytes from mice to determine if enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) is neurotropic, identify the sites of virus infection within the central nervous system, and to determine if neurovirulence is a recently acquired property of the virus or is a phenotype of only some isolates. Results from this work demonstrated that EV-D68 is neurotropic and many virus isolates can infect astrocytes as well as neurons.