Mature Liver Stages of Cloned 'Plasmodium falciparum' Share Epitopes with Proteins from Sporozoites and Asexual Blood Stages

摘要

The liver merozoites of malaria parasites are of paramount importance, as they initiate the parasite invasion of red blood cells and start the cycle associated with the clinical features of malaria. Investigating liver merozoite antigen is difficult because of the lack of a rodent model of human malaria. In addition, only a low proportion of cells are obtained in vivo, the parasites from Cebus and Aotus monkeys are immature, and in-vitro experiments with liver cells are often confounded by contamination with the natural mosquito flora co-purified with the sporozoites used for seeding the liver cultures. In this study, mature liver schizonts were shown to possess many of the antigenic determinants recognized by MoAbs and sera specific for defined sporozoite and blood-stage antigens. Employed was an immunofluorescence procedure based on evaluating parasites in cryosections prepared from infected chimpanzee liver. Sufficient numbers of sectioned parasites were evaluated with each antibody to assure the reproducibility of the results, and the fixation procedure used was sufficiently non-destructive to parasite antigens so that clear differences between reactions of specific antibodies and negative controls were observed. Keyword: Reprints. (KR/KT)