Emerging drug resistance in leishmania

Emergence of drug resistance in LD

I am Supratim Pradhan, third year research student (Roll No. 19MM92R08) of School of Medical Science and Technology working on liver stage visceral leishmaniasis under the supervision of Dr Budhaditya Mukherjee.

Project Title Unravelling immune-molecular mechanism of defective antigen presentation in liver stage Leishmania infection to design novel therapeutics

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), caused by the protozoan parasite Leishmania donovani (LD) is one of the major deadly tropical neglected diseases, with an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 worldwide deaths each year (1-3). Currently, VL is suffering from lack of vaccines with limited drug availability, high toxicity & emergence of drug resistance. After entering the bloodstream, LD are phagocytosed by neutrophils and then these parasitized neutrophils are taken up by liver resident antigen-presenting (APC) Kupffer cells (KC). KC offers first line of defense against LD infection by presenting parasite-specific immunogenic-peptides to class I/II MHC which then evokes a host-protective T-cell response. However, LD has devised ways by which it can escape this immunosurveillance, which allows LD to perform subsequent infection and disseminate all over the body leading to a productive infection. How LD interferes with the antigen-presentation process in KC remains elusive. Several studies have pointed out that host membrane cholesterol plays an essential role in antigen presentation. Our primary goal is to check the antigen presentation ability of liver macrophages and find out the cause behind the successful infection.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse