Isolation of infectious Theileria parva sporozoites secreted by infected Rhipicephalus appendiculatus ticks into an in vitro tick feeding system.

Background: Vector-borne diseases pose an increasing threat to global food security. Vaccines, diagnostic tests, and therapeutics are urgently needed for tick-borne diseases that affect livestock. However, the inability to obtain significant quantities of pathogen stages derived from ticks has hindered research.

A U.S. isolate of Theileria orientalis, Ikeda genotype, is transmitted to cattle by the invasive Asian longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis.

Background: Theileria orientalis is a tick-borne hemoparasite that causes anemia, ill thrift, and death in cattle globally. The Ikeda strain of T. orientalis is more virulent than other strains, leading to severe clinical signs and death of up to 5% of affected animals.

Development of an Indirect ELISA to Detect Equine Antibodies to .

The apicomplexan parasite is one of two known causative agents of equine theileriosis. It causes milder clinical disease than its more virulent counterpart, , in experimentally infected horses, and can superinfect -positive horses. The current equi merozoite antigen 1 (EMA1)-based competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)used in the U.

Changes in the Molecular and Functional Phenotype of Bovine Monocytes during Infection.

is the causative agent of East Coast fever (ECF), a tick-borne disease that kills over a million cattle each year in sub-Saharan Africa. Immune protection against involves a CD8 cytotoxic T cell response to parasite-infected cells. However, there is currently a paucity of knowledge regarding the role played by innate immune cells in ECF pathogenesis and control.

Correlation of cellular factors and differential scrapie prion permissiveness in ovine microglia.

Prion diseases are fatal neurodegenerative disorders by which the native cellular prion protein (PrP) is misfolded into an accumulating, disease-associated isoform (PrP). To improve the understanding of prion pathogenesis and develop effective treatments, it is essential to elucidate factors contributing to cellular permissiveness. We previously isolated five clones from an immortalized subline of ovine microglia, two of which had demonstrated differential permissiveness to a natural isolate of sheep scrapie and distinct transcriptomic profiles.

Antiprion Activity of DB772 and Related Monothiophene- and Furan-Based Analogs in a Persistently Infected Ovine Microglia Culture System.

The transmissible spongiform encephalopathies are fatal neurodegenerative disorders characterized by the misfolding of the native cellular prion protein (PrP(C)) into the accumulating, disease-associated isoform (PrP(Sc)). Despite extensive research into the inhibition of prion accumulation, no effective treatment exists. Previously, we demonstrated the inhibitory activity of DB772, a monocationic phenyl-furan-benzimidazole, against PrP(Sc) accumulation in sheep microglial cells.

Discovery of a novel, monocationic, small-molecule inhibitor of scrapie prion accumulation in cultured sheep microglia and Rov cells.

Prion diseases, including sheep scrapie, are neurodegenerative diseases with the fundamental pathogenesis involving conversion of normal cellular prion protein (PrP(C)) to disease-associated prion protein (PrP(Sc)). Chemical inhibition of prion accumulation is widely investigated, often using rodent-adapted prion cell culture models. Using a PrP(Sc)-specific ELISA we discovered a monocationic phenyl-furan-benzimidazole (DB772), which has previously demonstrated anti-pestiviral activity and represents a chemical category previously untested for anti-prion activity, that inhibited PrP(Sc) accumulation and prion infectivity in primary sheep microglial cell cultures (PRNP 136VV/154RR/171QQ) and Rov9 cultures (VRQ-ovinized RK13 cells).