Ivanchenko, Maria G.;
Lerner, Jennifer P.;
McCormick, Renee S.;
Toumadje, Arazdordi;
Allen, Brady;
Fischer, Kay;
Hedstrom, Olaf;
Helmrich, Angela;
Barnes, David W.;
Bayne, Christopher J.
Continuous in vitro propagation and differentiation of cultures of the intramolluscan stages of the human parasite Schistosoma mansoni
Description:
<jats:p>
The metazoan parasitic blood flukes,
<jats:italic>Schistosoma</jats:italic>
spp., infect over 200 million people worldwide and cause extensive human morbidity and mortality. Research strategies for development of anti-schistosomal agents are impeded by the organism’s complex molluscan–mammalian life cycle, which limits experimental approaches and availability of material. We derived long-term continuously proliferative cultures of
<jats:italic>Schistosoma mansoni</jats:italic>
sporocysts capable of generating cercariae
<jats:italic>in vitro</jats:italic>
. Cultured organisms retained the ability to parasitize the host, and they exhibited developmental regulation of candidate stage-specific genes in the host-free culture system. Evidence for expression of a reverse transcriptase also was found in the cultured organisms, pointing to this activity as a possible mechanistic contributor to the dynamic relationship between the parasite and its hosts. Continuous
<jats:italic>in vitro</jats:italic>
propagation of the asexual sporocyst stage allows isolation of clonally derived parasite populations and provides a means to study schistosomal molecular genetics, metabolism, and evasion of host defenses.
</jats:p>