Liver-stage fate determination in Plasmodium vivax parasites: Characterization of schizont growth and hypnozoite fating from patient isolates.

ABSTRACT: Plasmodium vivax, one species of parasite causing human malaria, forms a dormant liver stage, termed the hypnozoite, which activate weeks, months or years after the primary infection, causing relapse episodes. Relapses significantly contribute to the vivax malaria burden and are only killed with drugs of the 8-aminoquinoline class, which are contraindicated in many vulnerable populations. Development of new therapies targeting hypnozoites is hindered, in part, by the lack of robust methods to continuously culture and characterize this parasite. As a result, the determinants of relapse periodicity and the molecular processes that drive hypnozoite formation, persistence, and activation are largely unknown. While previous reports have described vastly different liver-stage growth metri

SUBMITTER: Vantaux A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9539820 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature