scholarly journals A reliable ex vivo invasion assay of human reticulocytes by Plasmodium vivax

Blood ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 118 (13) ◽  
pp. e74-e81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Russell ◽  
Rossarin Suwanarusk ◽  
Céline Borlon ◽  
Fabio T. M. Costa ◽  
Cindy S. Chu ◽  
...  

AbstractCurrently, there are no reliable RBC invasion assays to guide the discovery of vaccines against Plasmodium vivax, the most prevalent malaria parasite in Asia and South America. Here we describe a protocol for an ex vivo P vivax invasion assay that can be easily deployed in laboratories located in endemic countries. The assay is based on mixing enriched cord blood reticulocytes with matured, trypsin-treated P vivax schizonts concentrated from clinical isolates. The reliability of this assay was demonstrated using a large panel of P vivax isolates freshly collected from patients in Thailand.

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Auburn ◽  
Ulrike Böhme ◽  
Sascha Steinbiss ◽  
Hidayat Trimarsanto ◽  
Jessica Hostetler ◽  
...  

Plasmodium vivax is now the predominant cause of malaria in the Asia-Pacific, South America and Horn of Africa. Laboratory studies of this species are constrained by the inability to maintain the parasite in continuous ex vivo culture, but genomic approaches provide an alternative and complementary avenue to investigate the parasite’s biology and epidemiology. To date, molecular studies of P. vivax have relied on the Salvador-I reference genome sequence, derived from a monkey-adapted strain from South America. However, the Salvador-I reference remains highly fragmented with over 2500 unassembled scaffolds.  Using high-depth Illumina sequence data, we assembled and annotated a new reference sequence, PvP01, sourced directly from a patient from Papua Indonesia. Draft assemblies of isolates from China (PvC01) and Thailand (PvT01) were also prepared for comparative purposes. The quality of the PvP01 assembly is improved greatly over Salvador-I, with fragmentation reduced to 226 scaffolds. Detailed manual curation has ensured highly comprehensive annotation, with functions attributed to 58% core genes in PvP01 versus 38% in Salvador-I. The assemblies of PvP01, PvC01 and PvT01 are larger than that of Salvador-I (28-30 versus 27 Mb), owing to improved assembly of the subtelomeres.  An extensive repertoire of over 1200 Plasmodium interspersed repeat (pir) genes were identified in PvP01 compared to 346 in Salvador-I, suggesting a vital role in parasite survival or development. The manually curated PvP01 reference and PvC01 and PvT01 draft assemblies are important new resources to study vivax malaria. PvP01 is maintained at GeneDB and ongoing curation will ensure continual improvements in assembly and annotation quality.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 496-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naïm Bouazza ◽  
Frantz Foissac ◽  
Déborah Hirt ◽  
Saïk Urien ◽  
Sihem Benaboud ◽  
...  

Background: Drug prescriptions are usual during pregnancy, however, women and their fetuses still remain an orphan population with regard to drugs efficacy and safety. Most xenobiotics diffuse through the placenta and some of them can alter fetus development resulting in structural abnormalities, growth or functional deficiencies. Methods: To summarize the different methodologies developed towards the prediction of fetal drug exposure. Results: Neonatal cord blood concentration is the most specific measurement of the transplacental drug transfer at the end of pregnancy. Using the cord blood and mother drug concentrations altogether, drug exchanges between the mother and fetus can be modeled and quantified via a population pharmacokinetic analysis. Thereafter, it is possible to estimate the fetus exposure and the fetus-to-mother exposure ratio. However, the prediction of placental transfer before any administration to pregnant women is desirable. Animal studies remain difficult to interpret due to structural and functional inter-species placenta differences. The ex-vivo perfusion of the human placental cotyledon is the method of reference to study the human placental transfer of drugs because it is thought to mimic the functional placental tissue. However, extrapolation of data to in vivo situation remains difficult. Some research groups have extensively worked on physiologically based models (PBPK) to predict fetal drug exposure and showed very encouraging results. Conclusion: PBPK models appeared to be a very promising tool in order to predict fetal drug exposure in-silico. However, these models mainly picture the end of pregnancy and knowledge regarding both, development of the placental permeability and transporters is strongly needed.


Author(s):  
Valentina Orticelli ◽  
Andrea Papait ◽  
Elsa Vertua ◽  
Patrizia Bonassi Signoroni ◽  
Pietro Romele ◽  
...  

Cancers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 3818
Author(s):  
Maud Plantinga ◽  
Denise A. M. H. van den Beemt ◽  
Ester Dünnebach ◽  
Stefan Nierkens

Induction of long-lasting immunity by dendritic cells (DCs) makes them attractive candidates for anti-tumor vaccination. Although DC vaccinations are generally considered safe, clinical responses remain inconsistent in clinical trials. This initiated studies to identify subsets of DCs with superior capabilities to induce effective and memory anti-tumor responses. The use of primary DCs has been suggested to overcome the functional limitations of ex vivo monocyte-derived DCs (moDC). The ontogeny of primary DCs has recently been revised by the introduction of DC3, which phenotypically resembles conventional (c)DC2 as well as moDC. Previously, we developed a protocol to generate cDC2s from cord blood (CB)-derived stem cells via a CD115-expressing precursor. Here, we performed index sorting and single-cell RNA-sequencing to define the heterogeneity of in vitro developed DC precursors and identified CD14+CD115+ expressing cells that develop into CD1c++DCs and the remainder cells brought about CD123+DCs, as well as assessed their potency. The maturation status and T-cell activation potential were assessed using flow cytometry. CD123+DCs were specifically prone to take up antigens but only modestly activated T-cells. In contrast, CD1c++ are highly mature and specialized in both naïve as well as antigen-experienced T-cell activation. These findings show in vitro functional diversity between cord blood stem cell-derived CD123+DC and CD1c++DCs and may advance the efficiency of DC-based vaccines.


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