The malaria sporozoite injected into a host by the bite of the mosquito vector initiates the parasite cycle that culminates in clinical disease. This sporozoite stage is highly antigenic, and immunization with irradiated sporozoites has prevented the development of malaria in rodent and simian hosts as well as in several human volunteers (1). Antisporozoite antibodies detectable in the sera of the immunized primate hosts appear to be associated with immune resistance.Recently, hybridoma-derived monoclonal antibodies directed against sporozoites of rodent and simian malaria were found to be protective, i.e., to abolish sporozoite infectivity both in vivo (2) and in vitro (3). 1 These antibodies react with circumsporozoite (CS) 2 proteins; that is, stage-and species-specific polypeptides that are uniformly distributed over the entire surface of the parasite and that are shed when cross-linked by antibodies (2, 4). 1The hybridoma technique was therefore used to develop monoclonal antibodies against sporozoites of P falciparum and P. vivax in an attempt to identify the protective antigens of the human pathogens for their application in a vaccine.
Materials and MethodsMice. BALB/c mice were immunized using viable and frozen sporozoites of P.falciparum or P. vivax. The P. falciparum spomzoites were of West African origin and were obtained by membrane feeding Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes on blood obtained from patients carrying P. falciparum gametoeytes. P. vivax sporozoites for immunization were obtained from Anopheles
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