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Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) belonging to the genus Flavivirus of the family Flaviviridae, is a causative agent of Japanese encephalitis (JE), an acute central nervous system (CNS) disease in humans [1]. JE is considered as one of the most important encephalitic arthropod-borne diseases. An estimated 3 billion people live in countries where JE is endemic and 30,000- 50,000 cases and 10,000-15,000 deaths are reported annually [1-3]. However, be-cause many cases in less well developed countries are almost certainly unreported, this is likely to be a gross underestimate of the actual number of cases that either result in fatality or infection with severe sequelae. Thus, it is important to understand the mechanism of the develop-ment of the disease especially in severe cases. To study the CNS pathology induced by encephalitic flaviviruses such as JEV and tick-borne encephaliti