Publications by authors named "U Krzych"
Article Synopsis
- The study aimed to assess the safety, immune response, and effectiveness of the malaria vaccine RTS,S/AS02 when combined with another protein (FMP1) in healthy adults.
- Sixty participants were divided into four groups to receive different vaccine combinations, and results indicated that co-administering RTS,S and FMP1 at the same site decreased RTS,S antibody levels but maintained similar levels of safety and cellular immune response.
- Immunized groups with RTS,S showed about 30% efficacy in preventing malaria after exposure, while the FMP1 alone group did not demonstrate any protective effect.
Preerythrocytic vaccines prevent malaria by targeting parasites in the clinically silent sporozoite and liver stages and preventing progression to the virulent blood stages. The leading preerythrocytic vaccine, RTS,S/AS01E (Mosquirix), entered implementation programs in 2019 and targets the major sporozoite surface antigen, circumsporozoite protein (CSP). However, in phase III clinical trials, RTS,S conferred partial protection with limited durability, indicating a need to improve CSP-based vaccination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe physicochemical properties of an antigen (Ag) influence the type, specificity, as well as duration of emerging immune responses. Like immune responses arising to nominal protein Ags, reactivities to protozoan parasites, Plasmodium falciparum and P. berghei, the causative agents of human and mouse malaria, respectively, are shaped by the form of the parasite.
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- Immunization with radiation-attenuated Plasmodium sporozoites (RAS) can provide strong, long-lasting immunity against malaria, with intravenous (IV) injection being more effective than intradermal (ID) methods.
- In tests with mice, those immunized via IV were completely protected from malaria when challenged by either IV or ID, while ID-immunized mice showed lower protection levels and became susceptible under certain conditions.
- The study highlighted that the route of initial infection challenge impacts the durability of the immune response, with IV-immunized mice demonstrating a higher number of effective CD8 T cells, which are critical for maintaining immunity against malaria.
We recently identified novel (Pb) liver stage (LS) genes that as DNA vaccines significantly reduce Pb LS parasite burden (LPB) in C57Bl/6 (B6) mice through a mechanism mediated, in part, by CD8 T cells. In this study, we sought to determine fine antigen (Ag) specificities of CD8 T cells that target LS malaria parasites. Guided by algorithms for predicting MHC class I-restricted epitopes, we ranked sequences of 32 Pb LS Ags and selected ~400 peptides restricted by mouse H-2K and H-2D alleles for analysis in the high-throughput method of caged MHC class I-tetramer technology.
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