Purchase of an automated "tipper" system to support the culture of infectious gametocytes for experimental malaria mosquito infections

购买自动化“自卸”系统，以支持实验性疟蚊感染的传染性配子体培养

• 批准号: MR/X012174/1
• 负责人: Michael Delves
• 金额: $ 13.7万
• 依托单位: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FX012174%2F1
• 关键词: Purchase; automated; tipper; system; support

We are requesting support to purchase three "tipper" systems for automated culture of malaria parasites for mosquito transmission. Malaria is still a disease of devastating impact to global health caused by the parasite Plasmodium. Plasmodium is transmitted by the bite of a mosquito and has a complex life cycle which involves transforming into several distinct forms which are specialised for different roles. Scientists have been able to culture Plasmodium falciparum (which causes the most deadly forms of malaria) in the laboratory for almost half a century. Most scientific research is focused on the asexual stage of the parasite life cycle, as this is the stage that causes disease symptoms and is easy to grow. However, to transmit to mosquitoes, the parasite must transform into gametocytes. Gametocytes are much more challenging to grow in the laboratory as they require 14 days to develop, requiring the researcher to "feed" them daily and never let them cool from body temperature. This means that they are usually laboriously grown in small batches continuously which consumes a lot of time that researchers would otherwise have to focus on experimentation. Experimental mosquito transmission requires access to parasite culture facilities, insectaries to rear mosquitoes and the apparatus and skilled staff to perform the mosquito infection. Taking advantage of these unique resources at LSHTM, we established the Human Malaria Transmission Facility to serve the UK and global malaria community providing researchers without specialised facilities, access to experimental mosquito infection. The Facility is successfully supporting a range of projects, however a bottleneck in manual gametocyte production is limiting further expansion. Another transmission facility in the Netherlands employs bespoke culture systems called "tippers" to automate the daily gametocyte feeding which significantly reduces routine culture maintenance and maintains consistent high quality parasites for experimentation. Purchase of a comparable system will give similar throughput gains for the LSHTM Facility and release additional slots for experimentation and allow us to support of a greater range of transmission projects.

我们请求支持购买三台自动培养疟疾寄生虫以防止蚊虫传播的“小费”系统。疟疾仍然是由疟原虫引起的一种对全球健康造成破坏性影响的疾病。疟原虫通过蚊子的叮咬传播，具有复杂的生命周期，包括转化为几种不同的形式，专门用于不同的角色。近半个世纪以来，科学家们已经能够在实验室中培养恶性疟原虫（引起最致命形式的疟疾）。大多数科学研究都集中在寄生虫生命周期的无性阶段，因为这是引起疾病症状和容易生长的阶段。然而，要传播给蚊子，寄生虫必须转化为配子体。配子体在实验室中培养更具挑战性，因为它们需要14天的时间来发育，需要研究人员每天“喂食”它们，并且永远不要让它们从体温中冷却。这意味着它们通常是费力地小批量连续生长的，这消耗了大量的时间，否则研究人员必须专注于实验。实验性蚊子传播需要获得寄生虫培养设施、饲养蚊子的昆虫饲养场以及进行蚊子感染的设备和熟练的工作人员。利用LSHTM的这些独特资源，我们建立了人类疟疾传播设施，为英国和全球疟疾社区提供服务，为没有专门设施的研究人员提供实验蚊子感染的机会。该设施成功地支持了一系列项目，但是人工配子体生产的瓶颈限制了进一步的扩展。荷兰的另一个传播设施采用称为“小费器”的定制培养系统来自动进行配子体的日常喂养，这大大减少了常规培养维护，并为实验保持了一致的高质量寄生虫。购买类似的系统将为LSHTM设施提供类似的吞吐量增益，并为实验提供额外的插槽，并使我们能够支持更大范围的传输项目。