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Updated: Jun 11, 2025
Plasmodium falciparum Gametocyte Culture and Mosquito Infection Through Artificial Membrane Feeding
Published on: July 3, 2020
A human-serum-free medium can induce more infectious P. falciparum gametocytes than a conventional
Kazutoyo Miura1,2, Bingbing Deng3, Ragavan Varadharajan Suresh3,4
1Laboratory of Malaria and Vector Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Rockville, MD, 20852, USA. kmiura@niaid.nih.gov.
Abstract:
Malaria remains a global health problem, and the standard membrane feeding assay (SMFA) is a key functional assay for development of new interventions to stop malaria transmission from human to mosquito. For SMFA, media with ~ 10% of human serum has been used for infectious gametocyte cultures, however, there are multiple challenges to obtain a suitable human serum. Here we show a human-serum-free culture medium (HSF), which was a mixture of two stem cell culture media and AlbuMAX, supported infectious gametocyte growth. Moreover, the HSF-induced gametocytes elicited significantly higher numbers of oocysts compared to gametocytes cultured with conventional human serum medium (Conv). While some caution is required when comparing percent transmission reducing activity data generated from HSF-SMFA and Conv-SMFA, the HSF method can facilitate the establishment of gametocyte cultures or SMFA by bypassing the need for human serum. Thus, this study will support future development of P. falciparum transmission-blocking interventions.
