A new molecular approach for cidal vs static antimalarial determination by quantifying mRNA levels Articles uri icon

authors

  • BAHAMONTES ROSA, NOEMÍ
  • RODRÍGUEZ ALEJANDRE, ANE
  • GONZÁLEZ DEL RÍO, RUBÉN
  • GARCÍA BUSTOS, JOSÉ FRANCISCO
  • MENDOZA LOSANA, ALFONSO

publication date

  • November 2011

start page

  • 171

end page

  • 177

issue

  • 2

volume

  • 181

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0166-6851

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1872-9428

abstract

  • In order to maximise compliance, the future antimalarial treatment should ideally require just a single-dose administration. This, in turn, demands new fast-acting effective drugs. Currently, methods to measure the in vitro killing rate of antimalarials are based on parasite growth. We have developed and validated a method to determine and classify antimalarial agents based on their cidal or static activity following quantitative Real Time PCR (RT-PCR) analysis. The method described here is a fast, reliable and user-friendly technique with a medium throughput. Metabolic activity of the parasite is followed by measuring mRNA expression levels of several genes during 5 parasite life cycles. mRNA from the parasite culture is then retrotranscribed to cDNA and quantified by RT-PCR. This new method provides a rapid and reproducible way to accurately measure the antimalarial activity of new compounds in vitro against Plasmodium falciparum.

keywords

  • plasmodium; cidal; static; real time pcr; gene expression; mrna