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Tag: David Peterson

All the pieces matter: UGA researchers collaborate to solve malaria puzzle

malaria parasites
Super-resolution microscopy showing malaria parasites infecting human red blood cells. credit: Muthugapatti Kandasamy, Biomedical Microscopy Core

They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Whoever coined that adage had probably never heard of Plasmodium.

It’s a microscopic parasite, invisible to the naked eye but common in tropical and subtropical regions throughout the world. Each year, millions of people are infected by Plasmodium and exposed to an even more debilitating—and often deadly—disease: malaria.

Malaria is one of the deadliest diseases known to man. It can lead to extreme illness, marked by fever, chills, headaches and fatigue. More than half the world’s population is at risk of contracting the disease, and those who develop relapsing infections suffer a host of associated costs.

Limited educational opportunities and wage loss lead to an often unbreakable cycle of poverty. Vulnerable populations are most at risk.

“When I’m teaching in an endemic area like Africa, it isn’t unusual to find a student who needs to sleep during part of the workshop because they have malaria,” researcher Jessica Kissinger said.

It’s a challenge she and her collaborators in the University of Georgia’s Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases (CTEGD) are trying to combat.

When the Center was established in 1998, there were only a couple of faculty members studying Plasmodium. Now, 25 years later, it has become a world-class powerhouse of multidisciplinary malaria research. Scientists examine various species of the dangerous parasite, studying its life cycle and the mosquito that transmits it.

While Plasmodium seems to have superpowers that allow it to evade detection and resist treatment, CTEGD researchers are working together to innovate and transfer science from the lab to interventions on the ground.

A 50,000-piece puzzle with no edges

Plasmodium is a complex organism, and studying it is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Some researchers contribute pieces related to the blood or liver stages of the parasite’s lifecycle, while others provide insights about hosts interactions. One way UGA’s research connects with the global effort to eradicate malaria is PlasmoDb—a resource derived in part from Kissinger’s research that is now part of a host of databases under the umbrella of The Eukaryotic Pathogen, Vector and Host information Resource (VEuPathDB).

“Our group has been able to help many others when their research question crosses into an –omic,” Kissinger said, referring to in-house shorthand for domains like genomics, proteomics and metabolomics.

Kissinger, Distinguished Research Professor of genetics in the Franklin College of Arts & Sciences, became interested in malaria and Plasmodium during her postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Working from an evolutionary biology perspective, she’s interested in how the parasite has changed over time.

PlasmoDb, a database of Plasmodium informatics resources, is a tool developed in part by the work of Distinguished Research Professor Jessica Kissinger, who became interested in malaria during her postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health.

“I see it as an arms race,” Kissinger said. “I want to understand what moves they have and can make.”

To understand the parasite, you must dive deep into its genetic code.

Kissinger paired her work in Plasmodium genomics with her interest in computing by helping create the database with information from the Plasmodium genome project completed in 2002. The Malaria Host-Pathogen Interaction Center, one of her projects at UGA, was a seven-year, multi-institutional effort funded, in part, by NIH to create data sets that could be used in systems biology of the host-pathogen interaction during the development of disease.

“Wouldn’t it be neat if, from the beginning of infection all the way to cure, you knew everything that was going on in the organism all the time?” Kissinger said, noting the project’s goal.

They generated terabytes of data that, along with data from the global research community, are publicly accessible and reusable through PlasmoDB and other resources.

Being part of a group that is studying so many different aspects of malaria helps put Kissinger’s research into perspective. Now, in addition to understanding the parasite, she also thinks about tools needed to facilitate research from peers.

High-tech solutions rely on basic research

David Peterson, professor of infectious diseases in the College of Veterinary Medicine, noted that low-tech solutions have mitigated malaria’s human costs. He acknowledged, however, that their long-term goals required more.

“We have to acknowledge that low-tech solutions, such as mosquito nets, have saved lives,” Peterson said. “But to develop the high-tech solutions that will one day end malaria, we need basic research.”

Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to malaria because their existing immunity to malaria fails to protect them during pregnancy. Placental malaria often results in  premature birth and low birth weight.

Peterson is interested in a binding protein that allows the parasite to adhere to the placenta. While many P. falciparum parasites have only one gene copy that encodes the placental binding protein,  Peterson is investigating Plasmodiumisolates with two or more slightly different copies.

But why isn’t one copy enough?

David Peterson
Professor David Peterson of the College of Veterinary Medicine acknowledges the importance of low-tech solutions like mosquito nets but said to mitigate its effects required better understanding at the genetic level.

That is the primary question Peterson is focused on. He wants to understand how Plasmodium uses extra copies to evade the immune system, distinguishing the role of each requires tools that Vasant Muralidharan, associate professor of cellular biology, has.

Muralidharan’s interest began when he contracted malaria himself. Through access to good health care, he made a full recovery, but the pain he endured remained. He wanted to understand this parasite. Even more, he wanted to make an impact with research.

His graduate training focused on biophysics, but soon his interest in Plasmodium resurfaced. He discovered there was a lack of tools to study the parasite on a genetic level.

“It’s like a house of cards, and each card is a gene,” Muralidharan said. “You can remove one and see what happens—does the house fall or remain standing?”

This is an illustration of the life cycle of the parasites of the genus, Plasmodium, that are causal agents of malaria.(Illustration by CDC/ Alexander J. da Silva, PhD; Melanie Moser)

In the days before CRISPR/Cas9, there wasn’t a precise way to remove genes. Muralidharan is among the pioneers of gene-editing techniques in Plasmodium.

Like Peterson, Muralidharan focuses on proteins secreted by the parasite. He studies the largely unknown process that allows the parasite to invade a red blood cell (RBC), replicate and escape. The lack of tools was a major hindrance, so Muralidharan created new ones.

These tools have been used by Muralidharan’s CTEGD and CDC colleagues to see how drugs might fail. Muralidharan’s laboratory can create mutant Plasmodium parasites that become resistant to a particular drug, and genome sequence databases allow researchers to check if that mutant is already circulating in malaria endemic regions.

Vasant Quote

Building a research bridge to endemic regions

Plasmodium vivax is the predominant malaria parasite in Southeast Asia. It causes “relapsing malaria” during which some parasites go “dormant” after entering the liver instead of reproducing. This phase is a major obstacle for current treatments.

CTEGD Director Dennis Kyle, GRA Eminent Scholar Chair in Antiparasitic Drug Discovery and head of the Department of Cellular Biology, became fascinated with the Plasmodium parasite early in his career, spending time living in Thailand and working in refugee camps where malaria is prevalent.

Dennis Kyle
CTEGD Director Dennis Kyle was moved to follow through with his work as a researcher on a trip to a refugee camp in Thailand. Upon seeing the challenges residents faced, he thought perhaps he should have become a physician. Instead, a local leader impressed upon him the impact you could have in generating new treatments that could benefit everyone. (Photo by Andrew Davis Tucker/UGA)

“When I first got to the refugee camp and saw the situation people were living in, I questioned my decision to become a scientist in the lab instead of becoming a physician,” Kyle said, recalling a camp he worked in that housed about 1,300 kids between the ages of 2 and 15. “There was a guy who was a leader in the group who probably had no more than an early high school education. He said, ‘Look at what you can do—you might generate something that would benefit all of us. The physicians we have in the camp can only work on a few people at a time.’”

Kyle’s laboratory is looking to repurpose medications that have antimalarial properties, a safe way to reduce the development time from lab to clinical use. He’s optimistic we will see a drug treatment that eliminates vivax malaria.

“That’s where UGA is playing a major role,” he said. “The Gates Foundation funded us to develop tools to study the dormant parasite in the liver. And we’ve been successful.”

One of Kyle’s collaborators is Samarchith Kurup, assistant professor of cellular biology, who studies the human immune response to Plasmodium infection.

“We use mouse models to delve into the fundamental host-parasite interactions, which you cannot do practicallyin humans,” Kurup said. “Our understanding of these fundamental processes gives rise to newer and better vaccination approaches and drugs.”

Another important CTEGD addition is Chet Joyner, assistant professor of infectious diseases, whose work has helped make it easier to study dormant parasites stateside.

Like other Plasmodium researchers, Joyner became interested in parasites at an early age. During an undergraduate parasitology class, he discovered how little was known about P. vivax. He was already interested in how diseases develop, so for graduate school he focused on the liver stage of vivax malaria. However, it was a difficult task.

Samarchith Kurup is an assistant professor of cellular biology studying the human immune response to Plasmodium infection. (photo credit: Lauren Corcino)
Samarchith Kurup is an assistant professor of cellular biology studying the human immune response to Plasmodium infection. (photo credit: Lauren Corcino)
Chet Joyner
Assistant Professor Chet Joyner discovered how little was known about Plasmodium vivax as an undergraduate student.

“At the time, the technologies weren’t there,” Joyner said. “Dennis was working on his system, but it wasn’t on the scene yet. I changed from studying the parasite to studying the animal model to understand pathogenesis and immunology in humans.”

Joyner joined UGA after completing his postdoctoral training at Emory University, where he developed a non-mouse animal model to study vivax malaria.

“We have to go to [Thailand] where people are infected and collect blood samples and then feed mosquitoes these samples to do the necessary studies,” Kyle said. “That’s been very impactful. We’ve gotten a lot of data out of it, and now with Chet’s model it all can be done under one roof.”

Joyner wants to understand the human immune response with a focus on vaccine development. Building on Muralidharan’s and other researchers’ findings of how the parasite interacts with the RBCs, Joyner’s vaccine program targets a specific protein in the parasite that inhibits the development of immunity.

“My colleagues have shown that if you knock this protein out in the parasite, the immune response in mice is actually great, and we are now working together to evaluate this in non-mouse models.” Joyner said.

Joyner also has collaborated with Belen Cassera, professor of biochemistry, to screen drug compounds. Cassera’s training focused on metabolism to find drug targets. She is particularly interested in how a drug functions.

“If we understand how the drug works, it will help us predict potential side effects in humans,” Cassera said. “We can’t predict everything, but knowing how it works gives you some confidence in whether it will work in humans.”

Cassera is focused on finding drugs that will treat the more lethal Plasmodium falciparum, the predominant species in Africa, which is rapidly becoming resistant to current treatments. Her work is complementary to Kyle’s.

“They run certain assays for the liver-stage infection, and our lab benefits because we want to know if the drug we are developing is specific for the blood stage or can tackle all stages,” Cassera said.

M. Belen Cassera
Professor Belen Cassera is identifying drugs that will treat the lethal Plasmodium falciparum, a predominant species of the parasite in Africa that has become resistant to many current treatments.

Don’t forget the mosquito

“Malaria is a vector-borne disease transmitted by a mosquito. You need to tackle not only the parasite in the human but also stop its transmission,” Cassera said. “CTEGD is unique because we can study the whole life cycle, including the mosquito.”

Michael Strand, H.M. Pulliam Chair of Entomology in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and a National Academy of Sciences Fellow, is an expert on parasite-host interactions. Instead of the human host, he is interested in mosquitoes. Recent work indicates blood feeding behavior of mosquitoes strongly affects malaria parasite development while the gut microbiota of mosquitos could lead to new ways to control populations. Having the SporoCore insectory on campus aids his research.

Michael Strand is an expert on parasite-host interactions. His research focuses on mosquitoes and their effects on malaria parasite development.
Michael Strand is an expert on parasite-host interactions. His research focuses on mosquitoes and their effects on malaria parasite development.

Established in 2020, SporoCore, under the management of Ash Pathak, assistant research scientist in the Department of Infectious Diseases, provides both uninfected and Plasmodium-infected Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes to researchers at UGA and other institutions. Like Joyner’s animal model, the insectory allows for research to be done in the U.S. that would otherwise require field work in an endemic country.

Old-school interventions like mosquito nets, combined with new drug therapies, have reduced the number of malaria deaths, which declined over the last 30 years before rising slightly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Great strides have been made to control and treat malaria—but not enough. New tools, like the ones being developed at CTEGD, are needed to keep pushing malaria’s morbidity and mortality rates in the right direction.

“The hard part—what can’t be done easily with the tools we already have—is being done,” Kyle said. “We just need new tools, which is one of the things that our center is really a leader in.”

 

This story was first published at https://research.uga.edu/news/all-the-pieces-matter-uga-researchers-collaborate-to-solve-malaria-puzzle/

Polymorphic Molecular Signatures in Variable Regions of the Plasmodium falciparum var2csa DBL3x Domain Are Associated with Virulence in Placental Malaria

The Plasmodium falciparum protein VAR2CSA allows infected erythrocytes to accumulate within the placenta, inducing pathology and poor birth outcomes. Multiple exposures to placental malaria (PM) induce partial immunity against VAR2CSA, making it a promising vaccine candidate. However, the extent to which VAR2CSA genetic diversity contributes to immune evasion and virulence remains poorly understood. The deep sequencing of the var2csa DBL3X domain in placental blood from forty-nine primigravid and multigravid women living in malaria-endemic western Kenya revealed numerous unique sequences within individuals in association with chronic PM but not gravidity. Additional analysis unveiled four distinct sequence types that were variably present in mixed proportions amongst the study population. An analysis of the abundance of each of these sequence types revealed that one was inversely related to infant gestational age, another was inversely related to placental parasitemia, and a third was associated with chronic PM. The categorization of women according to the type to which their dominant sequence belonged resulted in the segregation of types as a function of gravidity: two types predominated in multigravidae whereas the other two predominated in primigravidae. The univariate logistic regression analysis of sequence type dominance further revealed that gravidity, maternal age, placental parasitemia, and hemozoin burden (within maternal leukocytes), reported a lack of antimalarial drug use, and infant gestational age and birth weight influenced the odds of membership in one or more of these sequence predominance groups. Cumulatively, these results show that unique var2csa sequences differentially appear in women with different PM exposure histories and segregate to types independently associated with maternal factors, infection parameters, and birth outcomes. The association of some var2csa sequence types with indicators of pathogenesis should motivate vaccine efforts to further identify and target VAR2CSA epitopes associated with maternal morbidity and poor birth outcomes.

Eldin Talundzic, Stephen Scott, Simon O Owino, David S Campo, Naomi W Lucchi, Venkatachalam Udhayakumar, Julie M Moore, David S Peterson. Pathogens. 2022 Apr 28;11(5):520. doi: 10.3390/pathogens11050520

Limited genetic variability of Cytauxzoon felis apical membrane antigen-1 (ama1) from domestic cats and bobcats

BACKGROUND:

Cytauxzoon felis is a tick-transmitted apicomplexan that causes cytauxzoonosis in domestic cats (Felis catus). Even with intensive care, the mortality rate of acute cytauxzoonosis approaches 40% in domestic cats, while bobcats (Lynx rufus), the natural intermediate host of C. felis, remain clinically asymptomatic. However, multiple reports of domestic cats surviving acute disease without any treatment exist. One hypothesis for survival of these cats is infection with unique C. felis genotypes of lower pathogenicity. Prior studies have identified genetically distinct C. felis isolates containing polymorphisms within internal transcribed spacer regions (ITS) of the rRNA operon. However, these polymorphisms do not correlate with the clinical outcome of cytauxzoonosis, and so additional genetic markers are needed to test this hypothesis. We selected C. felis apical membrane antigen-1 (ama1) as a potential genetic marker of differential pathogenicity. AMA1 is a vaccine candidate for relatives of C. felis within Plasmodium spp.; however its historically high level of genetic polymorphism has resulted in escape from vaccine-induced immunity. While such diversity has hindered vaccine development, the expected polymorphism within the ama1 gene may be useful to evaluate population genetics.

RESULTS:

A 677 bp sequence of the C. felis ama1 gene was PCR-amplified from 84 domestic cats and 9 bobcats and demonstrated 99.9% sequence identity across all samples. A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was identified in domestic cats and bobcats with evidence for co-infection with both genotypes identified in two domestic cats. The prevalence of the two genotypes varied with geographical distribution in domestic cats. Nucleotide diversity (π) and haplotype diversity (H) were calculated for C. felis ama1 and ama1 of related apicomplexans to assess genetic diversity. Based on these values (π = 0.00067 and H = 0.457), the diversity of the C. felis ama1 gene region analyzed is considerably lower than what is documented in related apicomplexans.

CONCLUSIONS:

In surprising contrast to related apicomplexans, our results support that the sequence of the C. felis ama1 gene is highly conserved. While lack of genetic diversity limits utility of C. felis AMA1 as a genetic marker for clinical outcome, it supports further investigation as a vaccine candidate for cytauxzoonosis.

Jaime L. Tarigo, Lisa S. Kelly, Holly M. Brown and David S. Peterson. 2019. Parasites & Vectors; 12:115. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13071-019-3347-5

Targeted Inhibition of Plasmodium falciparum Calcium-Dependent Protein Kinase 1 with a Constrained J Domain-Derived Disruptor Peptide

graphical abstract

To explore the possibility of constrained peptides to target Plasmodium-infected cells, we designed a J domain mimetic derived from Plasmodium falciparum calcium-dependent protein kinase 1 ( PfCDPK1) as a strategy to disrupt J domain binding and inhibit PfCDPK1 activity. The J domain disruptor (JDD) peptide was conformationally constrained using a hydrocarbon staple and was found to selectively permeate segmented schizonts and colocalize with intracellular merozoites in late-stage parasites. In vitro analyses demonstrated that JDD could effectively inhibit the catalytic activity of recombinant PfCDPK1 in the low micromolar range. Treatment of late-stage parasites with JDD resulted in a significant decrease in parasite viability mediated by a blockage of merozoite invasion, consistent with a primary effect of PfCDPK1 inhibition. To the best of our knowledge, this marks the first use of stapled peptides designed to specifically target a Plasmodium falciparum protein and demonstrates that stapled peptides may serve as useful tools for exploring potential antimalarial agents.

Briana R. Flaherty, Tienhuei G. Ho, Sven H. Schmidt, Friedrich W. Herberg, David S. Peterson, and Eileen J. Kennedy. 2019. ACS Infectious Diseases. DOI: 10.1021/acsinfecdis.8b0034

Genetic conservation of Cytauxzoon felis antigens and mRNA expression in the schizont life-stage

Cytauxzoon felis schizont formation in a feline splenic vessel

Fig. 1. Cytauxzoon felis schizont formation in a feline splenic vessel. A. Hematoxylin and eosin stained splenic tissue demonstrating schizonts forming a parasitic thrombus and completely occluding a splenic vessel, 20× objective, B. Hematoxylin and eosin stained schizont with developing merozoites, 40× objective.

Abstract

Cytauxzoonosis is a highly fatal disease of domestic cats caused by the apicomplexan protozoan Cytauxzoon felis, which is most closely related to Theileria spp. The growing prevalence, high morbidity and mortality, and treatment cost of cytauxzoonosis emphasize the need for vaccine development. Traditional approaches for vaccine development, however, have been hindered by the inability to culture C. felis in vitro. Recent availability of the annotated C. felis genome combined with genome-based vaccine design and protein microarray immunoscreening allowed for high-throughput identification of C. felis antigens that could serve as vaccine candidates. This study assessed the suitability of three of these vaccine candidates (cf30, cf63, cf58) in addition to a previously reported vaccine candidate (cf76) based on two criteria: genetic conservation among diverse C. felis geographic isolates and expression in tissues containing the C. felis schizont life stage, which has been previously associated with the development of a protective immune response. A comparison of seventeen C. felis isolates across seven states demonstrated high sequence identity (99–100%) for cf30, cf63, and cf58, similar to the degree of conservation previously reported for cf76. RNAscope® in situ hybridization using acutely infected feline splenic tissue revealed robust levels of all transcripts in the schizont life stage of the parasite. These data support the suitability of these three antigens for further investigation as vaccine candidates against cytauxzoonosis.

Daven B. Khana, David S. Peterson, James B. Stanton, Megan E. Schreeg, Adam J. Birkenheuer, Jaime L.Tarigo. 2018. Veterinary Parasitology; 263:49-53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vetpar.2018.10.007