PhD Oral Defense: Identification of Candidate Serum Biomarkers for Schistosomiasis Infection Using Mass Spectrometric Approaches
PhD Oral Defense of Manal Ibrahim Kardoush, Institute of Parasitology.
Schistosomiasis remains one of the major neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) causing chronic human illness with serious consequences for socio-economic development in tropical countries. Given that schistosomiasis is a prevalent and debilitating parasitic disease worldwide, new intervention tools are necessary for the precise diagnosis of the infected cases to prevent morbidity. The achievement of new diagnostic tests may be possible by the identification of specific biomarkers. The identification of proteins associated with acute and chronic infection may indicate new diagnostic candidates. In this context, proteomic technologies have been progressing, resulting in the discovery of new biomarkers and antigens for diagnosis of different phases of infection. The objective of this study is two-fold: (a) to identify proteomic patterns in sera for the different stages of infection starting from the early stage, acute then chronic stages of Schistosoma mansoni infections in a mouse model; (b) to profile the sera of human infected by S. mansoni, S. haematobium or both and compare them with the healthy profile sera.