研究課題
During the last year we have tested the capacity of Pam2Cys to act against a variety of stages of the malaria parasite we have found that1) Pam2Cys is able to consistently and dramatically reduce the numbers of malaria parasites able to survive in the liver of mice following a sporozoite inoculation. This reduction occurs both when Pam2Cys is administered prior to sporozoite inoculation, and 24 hrs following inoculation, proving that it is both preventative and curative of parasites at this stage2) Pam2Cys does not have anti-schizontal effects against parasites in the blood, nor does it protect against a murine model of cerebral malaria3) Pam2Cys does not protect against trypanosomes in the blood4) Pam2Cys reduces the numbers of gametocytes that are infectious to mosquitoes, resulting in a reduction in transmission potential
2: おおむね順調に進展している
We have been successful in testing Pam2Cys as an anti-liver stage, anti-schizontal and anti-gametocyte drug. We have shown that whilst it is effective against gametocytes and liver stage parasites it is not active against blood stage parasites, and neither does it protect against experimental cerebral malaria. We are now moving on to attempts to characterise how Pam2Cys works against gametocytes and liver stage parasites.This work would proceed faster if we had more people dedicated to working on it. At the moment, we only have myself and a PhD student, who is also concerned with other projects.
We will now focus on the following areas:1) Elucidation of the mechanism of protection against liver stage parasites by analysing changes in the immune micro-environment of liver following Pam2Cys inoculation2) We will test the ability of Pam2Cys to work in conjunction with antimalarial drugs to clear drug resistant malaria parasites from both the liver and the blood3) We will determine how the parasite responds to Pam2Cys-mediated immune stress through transcriptome analysis of parasites that survive in the liver following Pam2Cys treatment4)We will attempt to use Pam2Cys as an adjuvant along with single epitope vaccines of polymorphic antigens, in order to boost their capacity to protect against heterologous parasites.
すべて 2017 2016
すべて 雑誌論文 (6件) (うち国際共著 6件、 査読あり 6件、 オープンアクセス 6件、 謝辞記載あり 3件) 学会発表 (7件) (うち国際学会 2件)
New England Journal of Medicine
巻: 376 ページ: 991-993
10.1056/NEJMc1612765
Parasitology
巻: 144 ページ: 527-535
10.1017/S0031182016002110
Parasitology International
巻: 印刷中 ページ: 印刷中
10.1017/S0031182016002213
American Journal of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene
巻: 95 ページ: 1077-1085
10.4269/ajtmh.16-0383
International Journal for Parasitology
巻: 7519 ページ: 30135-30137
10.1016/j.ijpara.2016.05.009
Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy
巻: 60 ページ: 3340-3347
10.1128/AAC.02370-15
