Animal African Trypanosomosis (AAT) presents a severe problem for agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa. It is caused by several trypanosome species and current means of diagnosis are expensive and impractical for field use. Our aim was to discover antigens for the detection of antibodies to Trypanosoma congolense, one of the main causative agents of AAT.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Diagnosis of African animal trypanosomosis is vital to controlling this severe disease which hampers development across 10 million km(2) of Africa endemic to tsetse flies. Diagnosis at the point of treatment is currently dependent on parasite detection which is unreliable, and on clinical signs, which are common to several other prevalent bovine diseases.
Methodology/principle Findings: the repeat sequence of the GM6 antigen of Trypanosoma vivax (TvGM6), a flagellar-associated protein, was analysed from several isolates of T.
HIV-1 enters cells via interaction between the trimeric envelope (Env) glycoprotein gp120/gp41 and the host cell surface receptor molecule CD4. The requirement of CD4 for viral entry has rationalized the development of recombinant CD4-based proteins as competitive viral attachment inhibitors and immunotherapeutic agents. In this study, we describe a novel recombinant CD4 protein designed to bind gp120 through a targeted disulfide-exchange mechanism.
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