Abstract
Malaria is a widespread life-threatening disease caused by Plasmodium spp. Parasites. Current protocols to generate the transmissible stage of parasites (gametocytes) are hampered by low yields and a lack of understanding of its triggers. We investigated the individual and combined effects of glucose, gentamicin, heparin and N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) in generating gametocytes. This is the first study in which combinations of these four reagents in the culture media are evaluated. We discovered that adding only glucose (0.4% v/v) resulted in a high parasite load (parasitemia) of 1.73% and also a high proportion of late-stage gametocytes. When gentamicin and GlcNAc were added on top of glucose, the highest parasitemia of 2.15% was produced. However, this high parasitemia came with a low proportion of late-stage gametocytes. Contrary to existing literature, all media containing heparin resulted in parasitemia that was too low to count (TLTC). Media containing GlcNAc also resulted in TLTC parasitemia, unless glucose was also added. Our findings can act as a basis for optimising the yield of late-stage gametocytes per culture, significantly saving time and reducing possible costs in the study of transmission-blocking treatments.
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Tjokro, A.J., Pahari, D., Lim, K.I., Lee, E. (2023). Optimising the in Vitro Production of Late-Stage Plasmodium Falciparum Gametocytes for Anopheles Sinensis Infection. In: Lu, J., et al. Proceedings of the 9th IRC Conference on Science, Engineering, and Technology. IRC-SET 2023. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8369-8_41
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