scholarly journals Genetic markers of artemisinin resistance in Plasmodium spp. parasites

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (6) ◽  
pp. 525-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin J. Sutherland

The vast majority of malaria patients worldwide are currently treated with combination therapy comprising one of the artemisinin family of drugs, characterised by rapid action and short plasma half-life, co-formulated with a longer-lasting drug from the amino aryl-alcohol or quinoline families. There is now a widely perceived threat to treatment efficacy, as reduced susceptibility to rapid artemisinin clearance in vivo has become prevalent among populations of Plasmodium falciparum in the Greater Mekong subregion since 2008. In vitro and in vivo drug selection studies, heterologous cell expression experiments and genetic epidemiology have identified many candidate markers of reduced ring-stage susceptibility to artemisinin. Certain variants of the P. falciparum pfk13 gene, which encodes a kelch domain protein implicated in the unfolded protein response, are strongly associated with slow parasite clearance by artemisinin in the Mekong subregion. However, anomalies in the epidemiological association of pfk13 variants with true treatment failure in vivo and the curious cell-cycle stage specificity of this phenotype in vitro warrant exploration in some depth. Taken together, available data suggest that the emergence of P. falciparum expressing K13 variants has not yet precipitated a public health emergency. Alternative candidate markers of artemisinin susceptibility are also described, as K13-independent treatment failure has been observed in African P. falciparum and in the rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium chabaudi.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan C. Henrici ◽  
Rachel L. Edwards ◽  
Martin Zoltner ◽  
Donelly A. van Schalkwyk ◽  
Melissa N. Hart ◽  
...  

SummaryThe efficacy of current antimalarial drugs is threatened by reduced susceptibility of Plasmodium falciparum to artemisinin. In the Mekong region this is associated with mutations in the kelch propeller-encoding domain of pfkelch13, but variants of other parasite proteins are also thought to modulate the response to drug. Evidence from human and rodent studies suggests that the μ-subunit of the AP-2 adaptin trafficking complex is one such protein of interest. We generated transgenic Plasmodium falciparum parasites encoding the I592T variant of pfap2μ, orthologous to the I568T mutation associated with in vivo artemisinin resistance in P. chabaudi. When exposed to a four-hour pulse of dihydroartemisin in the ring-stage survival assay, two P. falciparum clones expressing AP-2μ I592T displayed significant and reproducible survival of 8.0% and 10.3%, respectively, compared to <2% for the 3D7 parental line (P = 0.0011 for each clone). In immunoprecipitation and localisation studies of HA-tagged AP-2μ, we identified interacting partners including AP-2α, AP-1/2β, AP-2σ and a kelch-domain protein encoded on chromosome 10 of P. falciparum, K10. Conditional knockout indicates that the AP-2 trafficking complex in P. falciparum is essential for the fidelity of merozoite biogenesis and membrane organisation in the mature schizont. We also show that while other heterotetrameric AP-complexes and secretory factors interact with clathrin, AP-2 complex subunits do not. Thus, the AP-2 complex may be diverted from a clathrin-dependent endocytic role seen in most eukaryotes into a Plasmodium-specific function. These findings represent striking divergences from eukaryotic dogma and support a role for intracellular traffic in determining artemisinin sensitivity in vitro, confirming the existence of multiple functional routes to reduced ring-stage artemisinin susceptibility. Therefore, the utility of pfkelch13 variants as resistance markers is unlikely to be universal, and phenotypic surveillance of parasite susceptibility in vivo may be needed to identify threats to our current combination therapies.


2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nguyen Thuy-Nhien ◽  
Nguyen Kim Tuyen ◽  
Nguyen Thanh Tong ◽  
Nguyen Tuong Vy ◽  
Ngo Viet Thanh ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT The spread of artemisinin-resistant Plasmodium falciparum compromises the therapeutic efficacy of artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs) and is considered the greatest threat to current global initiatives to control and eliminate malaria. This is particularly relevant in Vietnam, where dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine (DP) is the recommended ACT for P. falciparum infection. The propeller domain gene of K13, a molecular marker of artemisinin resistance, was successfully sequenced in 1,060 P. falciparum isolates collected at 3 malaria hot spots in Vietnam between 2009 and 2016. Eight K13 propeller mutations (Thr474Ile, Tyr493His, Arg539Thr, Ile543Thr, Pro553Leu, Val568Gly, Pro574Leu, and Cys580Tyr), including several that have been validated to be artemisinin resistance markers, were found. The prevalences of K13 mutations were 29% (222/767), 6% (11/188), and 43% (45/105) in the Binh Phuoc, Ninh Thuan, and Gia Lai Provinces of Vietnam, respectively. Cys580Tyr became the dominant genotype in recent years, with 79.1% (34/43) of isolates in Binh Phuoc Province and 63% (17/27) of isolates in Gia Lai Province carrying this mutation. K13 mutations were associated with reduced ring-stage susceptibility to dihydroartemisinin (DHA) in vitro and prolonged parasite clearance in vivo. An analysis of haplotypes flanking K13 suggested the presence of multiple strains with the Cys580Tyr mutation rather than a single strain expanding across the three sites.


2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 913-923 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Wiles ◽  
Miao Miao ◽  
Erin Coyne ◽  
Louise Larose ◽  
Andrey V. Cybulsky ◽  
...  

USP19 deubiquitinating enzyme has two isoforms, cytoplasmic and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) localized. The ER-localized isoform specifically suppresses muscle cell differentiation in vitro and appears to do so by inhibiting the unfolded-protein response that occurs during such differentiation. In vivo, loss of USP19 promotes muscle regeneration following injury.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara H. Stokes ◽  
Kelly Rubiano ◽  
Satish K. Dhingra ◽  
Sachel Mok ◽  
Judith Straimer ◽  
...  

AbstractThe emergence of artemisinin (ART) resistance in Plasmodium falciparum parasites has led to increasing rates of treatment failure with first-line ART-based combination therapies (ACTs) in Southeast Asia. In this region, select mutations in K13 can result in delayed parasite clearance rates in vivo and enhanced survival in the ring-stage survival assay (RSA) in vitro. Our genotyping of 3,299 P. falciparum isolates across 11 sub-Saharan countries reveals the continuing dominance of wild-type K13 and confirms the emergence of a K13 R561H variant in Rwanda. Using gene editing, we provide definitive evidence that this mutation, along with M579I and C580Y, can confer variable degrees of in vitro ART resistance in African P. falciparum strains. C580Y and M579I were both associated with substantial fitness costs in African parasites, which may counter-select against their dissemination in high-transmission settings. We also report the impact of multiple K13 mutations, including the predominant variant C580Y, on RSA survival rates and fitness in multiple Southeast Asian strains. No change in ART susceptibility was observed upon editing point mutations in ferrodoxin or mdr2, earlier associated with ART resistance in Southeast Asia. These data point to the lack of an evident biological barrier to mutant K13 mediating ART resistance in Africa, while identifying their detrimental impact on parasite growth.


Blood ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 126 (23) ◽  
pp. 1350-1350
Author(s):  
Steffan T. Nawrocki ◽  
Yingchun Han ◽  
Ronan LE Moigne ◽  
Valeria Visconte ◽  
Bartlomiej Przychodzen ◽  
...  

Abstract Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) therapy has remained relatively unchanged for more than 40 years with the majority of patients not achieving long-term remission when treated with currently available agents. Novel strategies are urgently needed to improve outcomes. The constitutive dysregulation of protein synthesis/turnover contributes to disease progression and drug resistance in many forms of cancer including AML. p97 (VCP) is a master regulator of protein turnover that has been implicated in oncogenesis and malignant pathogenesis. CB-5083 is a first-in-class selective and potent orally available inhibitor of p97 that in currently being evaluated in phase I clinical trials in patients with multiple myeloma and advanced solid tumors. To assess the potential benefit of p97 inhibition as a novel approach for AML therapy, we investigated the efficacy, pharmacodynamics (PD), and pharmacokinetics (PK) of CB-5083 in a panel of human AML cell lines with diverse genetic backgrounds, primary AML specimens from both newly diagnosed and relapsed/refractory patients, and xenograft mouse models of AML. In vitro treatment with CB-5083 potently diminished the viability of AML cell lines (n = 7) and primary CD34+ blasts obtained from patients (n = 10) with IC50s significantly below 1 µM (range 200 - 700 nM) in all lines and specimens evaluated to date. Diminished viability was associated with reduced clonogenic survival and increased apoptosis in AML cell lines and primary blasts. In contrast to many conventional and experimental drugs that are less active against primary AML cells than established AML cell lines, primary cells exhibited sensitivity to CB-5083 that was similar to cell lines. Additionally, CB-5083 was highly active in 3 different cell line models of cytarabine resistance and primary cells from refractory AML patients. This suggests that CB-5083 may be effective for patients who are relapsed/refractory to conventional therapy. In vitro PD analyses demonstrated that CB-5083 rapidly triggered the accumulation of ubiquitin-conjugated proteins, activated the unfolded protein response (UPR), disrupted STAT5 signaling, reduced levels of key STAT5 targets including BCL-xL and PIM-2, and induced apoptosis. The pro-apoptotic effects of CB-5083 were associated with activation of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) resident initiator caspase-4 and induction of the BH3-only protein NOXA, which has been previously demonstrated to be an important mediator of cell death induced by other agents that disrupt protein homeostasis. RNA sequencing (RNASeq) gene ontology (GO) analyses of MV4-11 and MOLM-13 AML cells following treatment with CB-5083 demonstrated that short-term treatment (6h) caused significant increases in multiple regulators of the unfolded protein response, protein biosynthesis, and other ubiquitin-related pathways (p<0.001). Results were confirmed by qRT-PCR. The in vivo anti-leukemic activity of CB-5083 was investigated in two different xenograft mouse models of AML: the FLT3-ITD+ MV4-11 cell line and APML HL-60 cells. Oral administration of CB-5083 (once daily, 4 days on, 3 days off) was well tolerated and induced disease regression in both xenograft models (p<0.01). In vivo PD studies demonstrated that administration of CB-5083 led to reduced AML cell proliferation (PCNA), to the induction of apoptosis (active caspase-3), and pathway inhibition as evidenced by poly-ubiquitin accumulation and elevated expression of CHOP, GRP78, and NOXA. PK-PD analyses demonstrated a correlation between the kinetics of the in vivo PD effects and drug exposure. Our collective preclinical data demonstrate that p97 inhibition is a very effective novel anti-leukemic strategy and support clinical investigation of CB-5083 in patients with relapsed/refractory AML. Disclosures LE Moigne: Cleave Biosciences: Employment. Rolfe:Cleave Biosciences: Employment. Djakovic:Cleave Biosciences: Employment. Anderson:Cleave Biosciences: Employment. Wustrow:Cleave Biosciences: Employment. Zhou:Cleave Biosciences: Employment. Wong:Cleave Biosciences: Employment. Sekeres:TetraLogic: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Celgene Corporation: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Amgen: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Carew:Boehringer Ingelheim: Research Funding.


Author(s):  
Chao Li

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress triggers a series of signaling and transcriptional events termed the unfolded protein response (UPR). Severe ER stress is associated with the development of fibrosis in different organs including lung, liver, kidney, heart, and intestine. ER stress is an essential response of epithelial and immune cells in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) including Crohn&rsquo;s disease. Intestinal epithelial cells are susceptible to ER stress-mediated damage due to secretion of a large amount of proteins that are involved in mucosal defense. In other cells, ER stress is linked to myofibroblast activation, extracellular matrix production, macrophage polarization, and immune cell differentiation. This review focuses on the role of UPR in the pathogenesis in IBD from an immunologic perspective. The roles of macrophage and mesenchymal cells in the UPR from in vitro and in vivo animal models are discussed. The links between ER stress and other signaling pathways such as senescence and autophagy are introduced. Recent advances in the understanding of the epigenetic regulation of UPR signaling are also updated here. The future directions of development of the UPR research and therapeutic strategies to manipulate ER stress levels are also reviewed.


2014 ◽  
Vol 58 (6) ◽  
pp. 3157-3161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kesinee Chotivanich ◽  
Rupam Tripura ◽  
Debashish Das ◽  
Poravuth Yi ◽  
Nicholas P. J. Day ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTConventional 48-hin vitrosusceptibility tests have low sensitivity in identifying artemisinin-resistantPlasmodium falciparum, defined phenotypically by lowin vivoparasite clearance rates. We hypothesized originally that this discrepancy was explained by a loss of ring-stage susceptibility and so developed a simple field-adapted 24-h trophozoite maturation inhibition (TMI) assay focusing on the ring stage and compared it to the standard 48-h schizont maturation inhibition (WHO) test. In Pailin, western Cambodia, where artemisinin-resistantP. falciparumis prevalent, the TMI test mean (95% confidence interval) 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) for artesunate was 6.8 (5.2 to 8.3) ng/ml compared with 1.5 (1.2 to 1.8) ng/ml for the standard 48-h WHO test (P= 0.001). TMI IC50s correlated significantly with thein vivoresponses to artesunate (parasite clearance time [r= 0.44,P= 0.001] and parasite clearance half-life [r= 0.46,P= 0.001]), whereas the standard 48-h test values did not. On continuous culture of two resistant isolates, the artemisinin-resistant phenotype was lost after 6 weeks (IC50s fell from 10 and 12 ng/ml to 2.7 and 3 ng/ml, respectively). Slow parasite clearance in falciparum malaria in western Cambodia results from reduced ring-stage susceptibility.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca De Lorenzo ◽  
Patrick Lüningschrör ◽  
Jinhan Nam ◽  
Federica Pilotto ◽  
Emilia Galli ◽  
...  

AbstractThe role of chronic endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in the pathophysiology of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), as well as a potential drug target, has received increasing attention. Here, we investigated the mode of action and therapeutic effect of the ER resident protein cerebral dopamine neurotrophic factor (CDNF) in preclinical models of ALS harboring different genetic mutations. We identify that intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) administration of CDNF significantly halts the progression of the disease and improves motor behavior in TDP43-M337V and SOD1-G93A rodent models of ALS. CDNF rescues motor neurons (MNs) in vitro and in vivo from ER stress associated cell death and its beneficial effect is independent of genetic disease etiology. Notably, CDNF regulates the unfolded protein response (UPR) initiated by transducers IRE1α, PERK, and ATF6, thereby enhancing MN survival. Thus, CDNF holds great promise for the design of new rational treatments for ALS.


2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (49) ◽  
pp. 12513-12518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliana M. Sá ◽  
Sarah R. Kaslow ◽  
Michael A. Krause ◽  
Viviana A. Melendez-Muniz ◽  
Rebecca E. Salzman ◽  
...  

Concerns about malaria parasite resistance to treatment with artemisinin drugs (ARTs) have grown with findings of prolonged parasite clearance t1/2s (>5 h) and their association with mutations in Plasmodium falciparum Kelch-propeller protein K13. Here, we describe a P. falciparum laboratory cross of K13 C580Y mutant with C580 wild-type parasites to investigate ART response phenotypes in vitro and in vivo. After genotyping >400 isolated progeny, we evaluated 20 recombinants in vitro: IC50 measurements of dihydroartemisinin were at similar low nanomolar levels for C580Y- and C580-type progeny (mean ratio, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.62–1.61), whereas, in a ring-stage survival assay, the C580Y-type progeny had 19.6-fold (95% CI, 9.76–39.2) higher average counts. In splenectomized Aotus monkeys treated with three daily doses of i.v. artesunate, t1/2 calculations by three different methods yielded mean differences of 0.01 h (95% CI, −3.66 to 3.67), 0.80 h (95% CI, −0.92 to 2.53), and 2.07 h (95% CI, 0.77–3.36) between C580Y and C580 infections. Incidences of recrudescence were 57% in C580Y (4 of 7) versus 70% in C580 (7 of 10) infections (−13% difference; 95% CI, −58% to 35%). Allelic substitution of C580 in a C580Y-containing progeny clone (76H10) yielded a transformant (76H10C580Rev) that, in an infected monkey, recrudesced regularly 13 times over 500 d. Frequent recrudescences of ART-treated P. falciparum infections occur with or without K13 mutations and emphasize the need for improved partner drugs to effectively eliminate the parasites that persist through the ART component of combination therapy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-43
Author(s):  
Chao Li

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress triggers a series of signaling and transcriptional events termed the unfolded protein response (UPR). Severe ER stress is associated with the development of fibrosis in different organs, including lung, liver, kidney, heart, and intestine. ER stress is an essential response of epithelial and immune cells in the pathogenesis of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), including Crohn’s disease (CD). Intestinal epithelial cells are susceptible to ER stress-mediated damage due to secretion of a large amount of proteins that are involved in mucosal defense. In other cells, ER stress is linked to myofibroblast activation, extracellular matrix production, macrophage polarization, and immune cell differentiation. This review focuses on the role of the UPR in the pathogenesis in IBD from an immunologic perspective. The roles of macrophage and mesenchymal cells in the UPR from in vitro and in vivo animal models are discussed. The links between ER stress and other signaling pathways, such as senescence and autophagy, are introduced. Recent advances in the understanding of the epigenetic regulation of the UPR signaling are also updated here. The future directions of development of the UPR research and therapeutic strategies to manipulate ER stress levels are also reviewed.


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