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Updated: Aug 16, 2026

Quantification of Intracellular Growth Inside Macrophages is a Fast and Reliable Method for Assessing the Virulence of Leishmania Parasites
Published on: March 16, 2018
Adversarial relationship between the leishmania lipophosphoglycan and protein kinase C of host macrophages
1Department of Biochemistry, University of Kentucky Medical Center, 800 Rose Street, Lexington, KY 40536, USA.
Abstract:
The dominant glycoconjugate on the cell surface of all Leishmania promastigotes is an unusual glycoconjugate named lipophosphoglycan (LPG). Its relative abundance, unique structure, and cellular location have implicated LPG as an essential virulence determinant. One feature of LPG resides in its strong inhibitory effect on the activity of protein kinase C (PKC) of host macrophages. This article summarizes the evidence that LPG is inhibitory toward PKC activation in macrophages and discusses the implication of such inhibition on intramacrophage survival of the parasite.
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