Background: Malaria remains a serious public health problem with significant morbidity and mortal-ity. This study was conducted to identify whether ficolin-A could play an active role of against mala-ria infection.
Methods: The function of ficolin-A was analyzed in mouse model. The open reading frame of fico-lin-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 recom-binant 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 sur-vival 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 infec-tion, compared to vector ) and the survival time was prolonged significantly in the infection mouse model (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.