Identifying the common biological properties of parasite vaccine targets

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The livelihoods of millions of people living in Africa are at risk due to infectious diseases that affect the health of livestock animals that provide them with essential food, milk, clothing and draught power. One major livestock disease is animal African trypanosomiasis (AAT) which causes annual productivity losses of over $1 billion. Such is the impact of this disease that the United Nations consider it to "lie at the heart of Africa's struggle against poverty". We have established infection models of both AAT-causing parasites: T. congolense and T. vivax, and using a library of recombinant proteins have identified subunit vaccine candidates that can confer sterile protection (see Autheman et al. Nature 2021 v595 p96 PMID:34040257). We would like to use these findings to identify commonalities in the biological properties of successful vaccine candidates with the ultimate aim of improving vaccine efficacy and taking a more rational approach to selecting targets for other parasitic diseases. The project will involve the latest in mass spectrometry techniques to establish cell surface residency times of parasite cell surface proteins. The results will be used to improve vaccine design which will be tested in animal models and also reveal fundamental aspects of the biology of these clinically and economically important parasites.