Berry, SL, Hameed, H, Thomason, A, Maciej-Hulme, ML, Saif Abou-Akkada, S, Horrocks, P and Price, HP (2018) Development of NanoLuc-PEST expressing Leishmania mexicana as a new drug discovery tool for axenic- and intramacrophage-based assays. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 12 (7). e0006639 - ?. ISSN 1935-2735

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Abstract

The protozoan parasite Leishmania causes leishmaniasis; a spectrum of diseases of which there are an estimated 1 million new cases each year. Current treatments are toxic, expensive, difficult to administer, and resistance to them is emerging. New therapeutics are urgently needed, however, screening the infective amastigote form of the parasite is challenging. Only certain species can be differentiated into axenic amastigotes, and compound activity against these does not always correlate with efficacy against the parasite in its intracellular niche. Methods used to assess compound efficacy on intracellular amastigotes often rely on microscopy-based assays. These are laborious, require specialist equipment and can only determine parasite burden, not parasite viability. We have addressed this clear need in the anti-leishmanial drug discovery process by producing a transgenic L. mexicana cell line that expresses the luciferase NanoLuc-PEST. We tested the sensitivity and versatility of this transgenic strain, in comparison with strains expressing NanoLuc and the red-shifted firefly luciferase. We then compared the NanoLuc-PEST luciferase to the current methods in both axenic and intramacrophage amastigotes following treatment with a supralethal dose of Amphotericin B. NanoLuc-PEST was a more dynamic indicator of cell viability due to its high turnover rate and high signal:background ratio. This, coupled with its sensitivity in the intramacrophage assay, led us to validate the NanoLuc-PEST expressing cell line using the MMV Pathogen Box in a two-step process: i) identify hits against axenic amastigotes, ii) screen these hits using our bioluminescence-based intramacrophage assay. The data obtained from this highlights the potential of compounds active against M. tuberculosis to be re-purposed for use against Leishmania. Our transgenic L. mexicana cell line is therefore a highly sensitive and dynamic system suitable for Leishmania drug discovery in axenic and intramacrophage amastigote models.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2018 Berry et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Uncontrolled Keywords: NanoLuc-PEST; Leishmania mexicana; axenic- and intramacrophage-based assays.
Subjects: Q Science > QH Natural history
Q Science > QR Microbiology
Divisions: Faculty of Natural Sciences > School of Life Sciences
Related URLs:
Depositing User: Symplectic
Date Deposited: 02 Aug 2018 10:33
Last Modified: 23 Aug 2018 14:00
URI: https://eprints.keele.ac.uk/id/eprint/5192

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