Recombinant antigens of Leishmania for the immunodiagnosis and immunoprophylaxis of american tegumentary leishmaniasis.

MARCO JD; BARROSO PA; ACUÑA L; SANCHEZ VALDEZ F; FERNÁNDEZ DE ULIVARRI M; HOYOS C; BRACAMONTE E; MOYA ÁLVAREZ A; BELLOMIO A

Congreso; LIV reunión anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Bioquímica y Biología Molecular; 2018

The leishmaniases are neglected parasitic diseases spread in 88 countries around the world, including Argentina, which control requires the development of new tools in diagnosis, vaccines and treatments. We applied the recently achieved Leishmania parasite genome/proteome knowledge and recombinant DNA techniques for the selection and synthesis of polypeptides for designing of high performance diagnostics or immunoprophylactics methods. Thus, through a seroproteomic analysis of the L. (V.) braziliensis amastigote extracts, three proteins were selected as candidates for immunodiagnosis. The criterion of selection applied was based on their differential reactivity against sera from patients with leishmaniasis and non-reactivity against sera from patients with Chagas disease, in two dimensional Western blots. In addition, five candidates for vaccines or immunotherapy were selected based on their differential induction of IgG2 or IgG3 antibodies detected by using sera from patients with tegumentary leishmaniasis. These subtypes of human immunoglobulin are related with a Th1 or Th2 type responses, determining the disease cure o progression respectively. After having expressed in Escherichia coli, these candidates have been analyzed for immunodiagnostic purposes by imunobloting or ELISAs, or for vaccines development in murine models of tegumentary leishmaniasis. This work describes the last results obtained, showing their applicability in the mentioned research fields.