Parasite cultivation in relation to research on the chemotherapy of malaria

Attempts to develop techniques for the continuous in vitro cultivation of the malaria parasite have not yet proved successful. It has not been possible to obtain the complete sporogonic development of the parasite in vitro although some progress was made with Plasmodium relictum and P. berghei. Exoerythrocytic stages of P. gallinaceum have been successfully cultivated in vitro in tissue explants and those of P. fallax have been grown in turkey primary embryo tissue cells. With the recent development of mammalian liver cell lines, prospects for the in vitro cultivation of exoerythrocytic stages of mammalian plasmodia are greatly improved. While it is still not possible to cultivate erythrocytic stages of plasmodia serially in vitro some species have been successfully grown through one asexual cycle. This progress has led to a number of applications of parasite cultivation to chemotherapeutic studies, to the testing of new antimalarial drugs, and especially to the testing of the susceptibility of P. falciparum to chloroquine. Cultivation technique is greatly improved by an appropriate choice of culture media. The addition of fresh red cells to the subculture system permits relatively high rates of invasion and multiplication of the parasite to be obtained. As well as its application in the screening and evaluation of antimalarial compounds, the in vitro cultivation technique is also very suitable for studying the entry mechanism of the parasite into red blood cells.