At the IGTP TODAY
The podcast of IGTP launches its ninth episode to mark World Malaria Day. This infectious disease, although under control in some regions, still affects more than 200 million people worldwide.
Nearly 200 baccalaureate and vocational training students from the Badalona institutes visited the centres at the Can Ruti Campus. The event "Open House, get to know the Can Ruti Campus up close", organised by the Badalona Education Service and IGTP, in coordination with other institutions on the Campus, has become a flagship initiative of the Science Week.
Recent research led by Carmen Fernández-Becerra and Hernando A del Portillo from ISGlobal and IGTP has provided new insights into the role of the spleen in malaria, specifically in infections caused by Plasmodium vivax.
Why is it so difficult to eliminate the "forgotten" malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax? The PvREX research group at ISGlobal and IGTP presents recent scientific data.
To better understand the complexity of P. vivax infections, the CaixaResearch project "Novel organ-on-a-chip technology to study extracellular vesicles-mediated cryptic infections in Plasmodium vivax malaria" has produced this video to disseminate key insights into cryptic erythrocytic infections. The initiative is led by Hernando A del Portillo and Carmen Fernandez-Becerra, group leaders of the Plasmodium vivax and Exosome Research Group (PvREX) at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) and the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP) in Spain.
A collaborative document outlining new guidelines for the isolation and characterisation of extracellular vesicles in parasitic disease research has been published in the Journal of Extracellular Biology. A research group from IGTP and ISGlobal contributed to the study, which could enhance our understanding of host-parasite interactions and advance early diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of parasite-caused diseases.
Using a mouse model, the research team characterized the protein profile of small vesicles secreted by liver cells, where the latent form of the parasite hides.
The project, led by Hernando A del Portillo, is one of the 30 projects selected from over 600 proposals presented in the 2021 call. The "CaixaResearch" programme on Health Research has selected 30 new cutting-edge biomedical research projects in Spain and Portugal, including the one led by Hernando A del Portillo, ICREA researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) and co-affiliated with the Germans Trias i Pujol Institute (IGTP).
The Plasmodium vivax and Exosome Research Group (PVREX) has worked closely with the Cytometry Core Facility of the IGTP to use multiparameter cytometry combined with cell purification techniques to study the complex cell populations in the human spleen. The study published in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology also looked at the interactions extracellular vesicles taken from plasma from patients with Plasmodium vivax infections, a parasite which causes malaria, and the different types of spleen cells. This is the first time this type of study has been done using spleen samples from donors.
The new studies change the accepted facts about the biology of Plasmodium vivax, a parasite that causes an often chronic and sometimes fatal form of malaria. The work focuses on the spleen, which has been thought to be the organ that cleared malaria parasites from the blood; the new data shows that in fact it is a reservoir and nursery for the parasite. This work can explain why malaria caused by P. vivax can have a latent liver form responsible for clinical relapses together with intrasplenic parasites likely responsible for chronic asymptomatic infections, thus providing new avenues for alternative control strategies.
