West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens, Department of Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology, College of Basic and Applied Sciences, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana.
Department of Parasitology, Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, College of Health Sciences, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana.
Traffic. 2021 Jun;22(6):194-200. doi: 10.1111/tra.12787. Epub 2021 Apr 24.
Plasmodium falciparum malaria remains a disease of significant public health impact today. With the risk of emerging artemisinin resistance stalling malaria control efforts, the need to deepen our understanding of the parasite's biology is dire. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are vital to the biology of P. falciparum and play a role in the pathogenesis of malaria. Recent studies have also shown that EVs may play a role in the development of artemisinin resistance in P. falciparum. Here, we highlight evidence on EVs in P. falciparum biology and malaria pathogenesis and argue that there is sufficient ground to propose a role for EVs in the development of P. falciparum artemisinin resistance. We suggest that EVs are actively secreted functional organelles that contribute to cellular homeostasis in P. falciparum-infected red blood cells under artemisinin pressure. Further exploration of this hypothesized EVs-based molecular mechanism of artemisinin resistance will aid the discovery of novel antimalarial therapies.
疟原虫仍然是当今对公共健康有重大影响的疾病。由于出现青蒿素耐药性的风险阻碍了疟疾控制工作，因此迫切需要加深我们对寄生虫生物学的理解。细胞外囊泡（EVs）对疟原虫的生物学至关重要，并在疟疾发病机制中发挥作用。最近的研究还表明，EVs 可能在疟原虫对青蒿素的耐药性发展中起作用。在这里，我们强调了 EVs 在疟原虫生物学和疟疾发病机制中的证据，并认为有充分的理由提出 EVs 在疟原虫青蒿素耐药性发展中的作用。我们认为，EVs 是在青蒿素压力下主动分泌的功能性细胞器，有助于疟原虫感染的红细胞中的细胞内稳态。进一步探索这种假设的基于 EVs 的青蒿素耐药性分子机制将有助于发现新的抗疟疗法。
