Ficolin-A Enhances Inhibition of the C-Terminal 19 kDa Region of Merozoite Surface Protein-1 of Plasmodium berghei Using Test in Vivo

Background: malaria remains a serious public health problem with significant morbidity and mortality. this study was conducted to identify whether ficolin-a could play an active role of against malaria infection. methods: the function of ficolin-a was analyzed in mouse model. the open reading frame of ficolin-a was cloned from the liver of new born c57bl/6 mice by rt-pcr and then inserted into the expression vector of eukaryon to construct pvax1-ficolin-a plasmid. meanwhile, the open reading frame of the 19-kda fragment of merozoite surface protein-1 of plasmodium berghei (msp119) was cloned and then the expression vector of eukaryon, pvax1- msp119 was constructed. both recombinant vectors were used in the mouse model of infection by plasmodium berghei. results: pvax1-ficolin-a alone could not significantly suppress parasite density and prolong survival time of infection mice; however, when injected pvax1-ficolin-a and pvax1- msp119 together, the percent of invasion by plasmodium was decreased (from 43.78% to 22.23% at 10 day after infection, compared to vector ) and the survival time was prolonged significantly in the infection mousemodel (p=0.01). conclusion: ficolin-a can enhance the immunoprotection of msp119, it implies ficolin-a may be used as immunoenhancer in the study of vaccine defending malaria.