Plant expression systems, a budding way to confront chikungunya and Zika in developing countries?

Plant expression systems could be used as biofactories of heterologous proteins that have the potential to be used with biopharmaceutical aims and vaccine design. This technology is scalable, safe and cost-effective and it has been previously proposed as an option for vaccine and protein pharmaceutical development in developing countries. Here we present a proposal of how plant expression systems could be used to address Zika and chikungunya outbreaks through development of vaccines and rapid diagnostic kits.

Human papillomavirus in upper digestive tract tumors from three countries.

Aim: To clarify human papillomavirus (HPV) involvement in carcinogenesis of the upper digestive tract of virological and pathological analyses.

Methods: The present study examined the presence of HPV in squamous cell carcinomas of the oral cavity (n = 71), and esophagus (n = 166) collected from Japan, Pakistan and Colombia, with different HPV exposure risk and genetic backgrounds. The viral load and physical status of HPV16 and HPV16-E6 variants were examined.

Plasmodium vivax: dimorphic DNA sequences from the MSP-1 gene code for regions that are immunogenic in natural infections.

The merozoite surface protein 1 gene of Plasmodium vivax (PvMSP-1) is becoming a solid genetic marker for studying the polymorphism of natural parasite populations from this prevalent human malaria. Indeed, a conserved and a variant PvMSP-1 gene segments have been amplified from total genomic parasite DNA obtained from isolates representing seven countries and three continents. Interestingly, the variant PvMSP-1 gene segment contains two highly conserved parental allele forms capable of limited genetic exchange at the sexual stage in the mosquito vector.