{"doi":"10.3389/fmicb.2022.1059115","title":"Use of Leishmania major parasites expressing a recombinant Trypanosoma cruzi antigen as live vaccines against Chagas disease","abstract":"Introduction Trypanosoma cruzi is the protozoan parasite causing Chagas disease, a Neglected Tropical Disease that affects 8 million people and causes 12,000 deaths per year, primarily because of cardiac pathology. Effective vaccination for T. cruzi remains an elusive goal. The use of a live vaccine vector, especially one that mimics the pathogen target, may be superior to the use of recombinant protein or DNA vaccine formulations. Methods We generated recombinant Leishmania major , a related trypanosomatid parasite, as a vaccine vehicle to express the immunogenic T. cruzi trans -sialidase (TS) antigen. The induction of T cell and antibody responses, as well as T. cruzi protective immunity generated by these vaccines were assessed in vivo. Results We demonstrate that mice inoculated with these recombinant TS-expressing L. major parasites mount T cell and antibody responses directed against TS and are protected against future T. cruzi infection. We also show that the partially attenuated dhfr-ts- CC1 L . major strain, previously found to induce protective immunity to virulent L. major infection without causing pathology, can also be engineered to express the TS antigen. This latter recombinant may represent a safe and effective option to explore for ultimate use in humans. Discussion Altogether, these data indicate that L. major can stably express a T. cruzi antigen and induce T. cruzi -specific protective immunity, warranting further investigation of attenuated Leishmania parasites as vaccine.","journal":"Frontiers in Microbiology","year":2022,"id":291661,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.952,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":974923,"name":"Anne E. O’Shea","orcid":"0000-0003-0785-8563","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":729803,"name":"Christopher S. Eickhoff","orcid":"0000-0002-5161-3603","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":758793,"name":"Hongjie Guo","orcid":"0000-0001-8446-6788","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":974924,"name":"Warren G. Lewis","orcid":"0000-0003-1210-6403","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":689512,"name":"Stephen M. Beverley","orcid":"0000-0001-5319-0811","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":251513,"name":"Daniel F. Hoft","orcid":"0000-0002-8921-4093","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":521076,"name":"Catherine W. Cai","orcid":"0000-0003-1855-7950","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":43,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:30:38.420009Z","pmid":"36523834","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}