1. A human-serum-free medium can induce more infectious P. falciparum gametocytes than a conventional human-serum-containing medium.
- Author
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Miura K, Deng B, Varadharajan Suresh R, Gebremicale YT, Zhou L, Pham TP, Roche K, Diouf A, Lovell JF, Julien JP, and Long CA
- Subjects
- Humans, Culture Media, Serum-Free pharmacology, Animals, Culture Media chemistry, Oocysts growth & development, Oocysts drug effects, Serum, Plasmodium falciparum growth & development, Plasmodium falciparum drug effects, Plasmodium falciparum physiology, Malaria, Falciparum parasitology, Malaria, Falciparum transmission
- Abstract
Malaria remains a global health problem, and the standard membrane feeding assay (SMFA) is a key functional assay for development of new interventions to stop malaria transmission from human to mosquito. For SMFA, media with ~ 10% of human serum has been used for infectious gametocyte cultures, however, there are multiple challenges to obtain a suitable human serum. Here we show a human-serum-free culture medium (HSF), which was a mixture of two stem cell culture media and AlbuMAX, supported infectious gametocyte growth. Moreover, the HSF-induced gametocytes elicited significantly higher numbers of oocysts compared to gametocytes cultured with conventional human serum medium (Conv). While some caution is required when comparing percent transmission reducing activity data generated from HSF-SMFA and Conv-SMFA, the HSF method can facilitate the establishment of gametocyte cultures or SMFA by bypassing the need for human serum. Thus, this study will support future development of P. falciparum transmission-blocking interventions., (© 2024. This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply.)
- Published
- 2024
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