In vitro Cultivation of Plasmodium falciparum

Plasmodium falciparum is a protozoan parasite that causes many deaths worldwide. It's cultivation in an in vitro culture setting contributes significantly to scientific studies. However, there are no laboratories in Turkey that cultivate P. falciparum in vitro. Hence, the purpose of this study was to cultivate P. falciparum in vitro.

Five P. falciparum strains were used in our study and were kept frozen in liquid nitrogen tanks. These parasite strains were then thawed in a 37 °C water bath and transferred to the Albumax-complete medium that was previously prepared. After that, the petri dishes were placed in the chamber. For 30 seconds, a special gas mixture containing 5% CO₂, 5% O₂ and 90% N₂ was added into the chamber which was placed in a 37 °C oven and left for incubation for 2 days. At the end of the incubation period, thin smear preparations were prepared from the medium, stained with Giemsa and examined using an immersion lens.

Examination of the smears revealed that trophozoite and schizont forms of all P. falciparum isolates were present at a rate of 2% in in vitro culture medium.

As a result of our study, the in vitro culture of P. falciparum was successfully developed. With this, several projects such as biological and chemical characteristics, pathogenicity, phenotypic and molecular-level drug sensitivities and parasite vaccination studies can be carried out more easily in our country.