Establishment of Plasmodium vivax culture system using red blood cells differentiated iPS cells.

2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24659192
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Parasitology (including Sanitary zoology)
• Research Institution: 独立行政法人国立国際医療研究センター
• Principal Investigator: YANO Kazuhiko 独立行政法人国立国際医療研究センター, 熱帯医学・マラリア研究部, 研究員 (30392393)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): KANO Shigeyuki 独立行政法人 国立国際医療研究センター研究所, 熱帯医学・マラリア研究部, 部長 (60233912)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2014-03-31
• Keywords: 原虫 / マラリア / 三日熱マラリア原虫 / iPS細胞

Research Abstract

The objective of the present study is to establish a culture system of Plasmodium vivax. We aimed to conduct erythroid differentiation from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) which were then co-cultured with the infected blood of vivax malaria patients. Induction of differentiation into red blood cells of iPS cells was successfully done (following Elizabeth S. et al.2005) and red blasts part of the sphere was reddened after 40 days of culture. Reddened spheres (erythroblast) were prepared for Plasmodium vivax infection by adhesion culture. Unfortunately we could not subject this erythroblast to vivax co-culture because there was no vivax malaria patient currently. Instead, we are attempting to establish of infection system to erythroblast, using cultured falciparum malaria parasites.