East Coast fever is a lymphoproliferative disease caused by the tick-borne protozoan parasite Theileria parva. The sporozoite stage of this parasite, harboured and released from the salivary glands of the tick Rhipicephalus appendiculatus during feeding, invades and establishes infection in bovine lymphocytes. Blocking this initial stage of invasion presents a promising vaccine strategy for control of East Coast fever and can in part be achieved by targeting the major sporozoite surface protein p67.
To support research on the biology of T. parva and the identification of additional candidate vaccine antigens, this article reports on the sporozoite proteome as defined by LC–MS/MS analysis.
Overall, these data establish a protein expression profile of T. parva sporozoites, the only such profile available to date. One or more of the newly identified proteins, in particular putative surface proteins, may prove to be effective vaccine candidates and might be combined with the major surface protein p67 to induce broader anti-sporozoite immunity, and protection against ECF.
Nyagwange, J., Tijhaar, E., Ternette, N., Mobegi, F., Tretina, K., Silva, J.C., Pelle, R. and Nene, V. 2017. Characterization of the Theileria parva sporozoite proteome. International Journal for Parasitology. http://hdl.handle.net/10568/89911
This research was supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish, Kenya, the Norman Borlaug Commemorative Research Initiative, an initiative between the Feed the Future program of United States Agency for International Development, USA and United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service, USA, the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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