Project description:Parasitic diseases of humans and other animals represent a major socioeconomic burden worldwide. In humans, parasitic worms (helminths) that cause neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) affect ~ billion people, equating to a burden of >12 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) (Hotez et al., 2014). In other animals, although challenging to quantitate, the disease impact of such helminths is major (Pedersen, et al., 2015; Charlier et al., 2020; Selzer and Epe, 2021), and some of these parasites are also transmissible to humans (i.e. zoonotic) (McCarthy et al., 2000; Gordon et al., 2016). The control of these diseases relies on diagnosis, treatment and management strategies, and anthelmintic treatment is usually a central component of a control campaign, as vaccines are not available for the vast majority of them. These treatments are not always highly efficacious/effective, and the reliance on them, particularly if they are used excessively in an uncontrolled (suppressive) manner, has led to the emergence and spread of anthelmintic resistances in parasitic worms (within 4-X generations; REF), particularly those of animals. Although the resistance status of worms of humans to available compounds is somewhat unclear (Prichard, 2005; Keiser and Utzinger, 2008; Vercruysse et al., 2011), this is not the case for worms of important production animals (e.g., sheep, goats and pigs), where such resistance(s) is/are widespread and essentially worldwide. In recent work, we established a high-throughput whole-organism, phenotypic assay for the screening of relatively large libraries of tens to hundreds of thousands of compounds, the subsequent evaluation of active compounds and structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies to strive toward the optimisation of the activity and potency of analogs, and the minimisation of side effects and toxicity (Taki et al., 2021b; Taki et al., 2021c; Shanley et al., 2022). However, our early discovery work has been hampered by not knowing the target(s) to which compounds might bind and how they might work. In recent years, there have been major advances in the development of methods for identifying drug-target interactions (reviewed by Mateus et al., 2021), which include affinity purification, activity-based protein profiling, kinobeads (for kinases), stability of proteins from rates of oxidation, protein painting, limited proteolysis/drug affinity responsive target stability and thermal proteome profiling (TPP). Published evidence (Savitski et al., 2014; Perrin et al., 2020; Selkrig et al., 2020) demonstrates clearly the exquisite capacity of TPP to define or infer target molecules in projects with a biomedical focus (e.g., cancer, autophagy or infectious disease), but this method has not yet been utilised to define an anthelmintic target. This context provides the very exciting prospect of being able to rapidly provide evidence of drug-target interactions. For these reasons, in the present study, we undertook a high-throughput whole-organism, phenotypic screen of a well-curated compound library, identified ‘hit’ compounds for evaluation, identified one candidate with lead-like characteristics and inferred the target of this promising small molecule in H. contortus.

Project description:Background: Most asthmatic patients have high serum levels of IgE directed against common environmental allergens such as house dust mite, animal danders and moulds. However the presence of specific IgE against individual allergens alone does not account for asthma. Many individuals are atopic but not asthmatic. Precise knowledge of the serum IgE specificity repertoire in asthmatic and non-asthmatic patients would substantially help in understanding the pathogenesis of the disease and at the same time facilitate the treatment and the implementation of preventive measures. Methods: We developed a microarray immunoassay containing 103 common allergens to study the IgE reactivity profiles of 485 asthmatic and 342 non-asthmatic individuals from families whose members had a documented history of asthma and atopy. The results were analyzed using k-means clustering to investigate whether IgE reactivity profiles correlated with asthma, disease severity and age of onset as well as with other atopic conditions such as rhinitis, conjunctivitis and eczema. We trained an artificial neural network (ANN) using the serum reactivity data to identify individuals as asthmatic and non-asthmatic. Results: Individual sera showed clear differences in the number and the combinations of allergens recognized as well as in the level of specific IgE. While the presence of specific IgE against single allergens correlated poorly with the pathological conditions examined k-means clustering analysis unraveled that a particular profile was significantly associated with asthma (p <1E-8). An ANN-based algorithm, calibrated with the profile reactivity data correctly classified as asthmatic or non-asthmatic 78% of the individual examined. Conclusions: Our analysis demonstrates that asthma may be a higher-order phenomenon related to patterns of response and not attributable to single antibody reactions. This information sheds new light on the risk of developing the disease and can be readily utilized in combination with an ANN-based tool to distinguish asthmatic and non-asthmatic individuals on the basis of their serum reactivity profile. The study consisted of a total of 872 sera samples: 485 individuals were diagnosed with asthma, 342 were classified as non asthmatic, a remaining 45 were classified as unconfirmed asthma diagnosis. The serum IgE reactivity profiles were analyzed against 103 allergens representative of 11 distinct allergen classes. Quantification of bound IgE: The fluorescence signal was acquired using ProScanArray Express™ version 3.0 software. PMC reading values of individual spots were corrected against the internal negative control to identify signals above background. Duplicate measurements of individual allergens were utilized. The signal collected from the allergens was interpolated with an external calibration curve to obtain the IU/ml value (see supplementary file GSE20020_IU_ml values.txt), and translated into a Class Score by plotting the data in a standard reactivity scale (see Sample data tables). Class Score values: (CLASS 0 (less than 0.35 IU/ml); CLASS 1 (0.35-0.7 IU/ml); CLASS 2 (0.71-3.5 IU/ml); CLASS 3 (3.51-17.5 IU/ml); CLASS 4 (17.51-50 IU/ml); CLASS 5 (50.01-100 IU/ml).

Project description:The presence of variability in the response of pigs to Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome virus (PRRSv) infection, and recent demonstration of significant genetic control of such responses, leads us to believe that selection towards more disease resistant pigs could be a valid strategy to reduce its economic impact on the swine industry. To find underlying molecular differences in PRRS susceptible versus more resistant pigs, 100 animals with extremely different growth rates and viremia levels after PRRSv infection were selected from a total of 600 infected pigs. A microarray experiment was conducted on whole blood RNA samples taken at 0, 4 and 7 days post infection (dpi) from these pigs. From these data, we examined associations of gene expression with weight gain and viral load phenotypes. The single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) marker WUR10000125 (WUR) on the porcine 60K SNP chip was shown to be associated with viral load and weight gain after PRRSv infection, and so, additionally, the effect of the WUR10000125 (WUR) genotype was examined. Limited information was obtained through linear modeling of blood gene differential expression (DE) that contrasted pigs with extreme phenotypes, for growth or viral load or between animals with different WUR genotype. However, using network-based approaches, molecular pathway differences between extreme phenotypic classes could be identified. Several gene clusters of interest were found when Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis (WGCNA) was applied to 4dpi contrasted with 0dpi data. The expression pattern of one such cluster of genes correlated with weight gain and WUR genotype, contained numerous immune response genes such as cytokines, chemokines, interferon type I stimulated genes, apoptotic genes and genes regulating complement activation. In addition, Partial Correlation and Information Theory (PCIT) identified differentially hubbed (DH) genes between the phenotypically divergent groups. GO enrichment revealed that the target genes of these DH genes are enriched in adaptive immune pathways. There are molecular differences in blood RNA patterns between pigs with extreme phenotypes or with a different WUR genotype in early responses to PRRSv infection, though they can be quite subtle and more difficult to discover with conventional DE expression analyses. Co-expression analyses such as WGCNA and PCIT can be used to reveal network differences between such extreme response groups. three timepoints from 100 animals are hibridized following a blocked reference design; Blood gene expression of pigs 7 days post infection

Project description:The presence of variability in the response of pigs to Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome virus (PRRSv) infection, and recent demonstration of significant genetic control of such responses, leads us to believe that selection towards more disease resistant pigs could be a valid strategy to reduce its economic impact on the swine industry. To find underlying molecular differences in PRRS susceptible versus more resistant pigs, 100 animals with extremely different growth rates and viremia levels after PRRSv infection were selected from a total of 600 infected pigs. A microarray experiment was conducted on whole blood RNA samples taken at 0, 4 and 7 days post infection (dpi) from these pigs. From these data, we examined associations of gene expression with weight gain and viral load phenotypes. The single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) marker WUR10000125 (WUR) on the porcine 60K SNP chip was shown to be associated with viral load and weight gain after PRRSv infection, and so, additionally, the effect of the WUR10000125 (WUR) genotype was examined. Limited information was obtained through linear modeling of blood gene differential expression (DE) that contrasted pigs with extreme phenotypes, for growth or viral load or between animals with different WUR genotype. However, using network-based approaches, molecular pathway differences between extreme phenotypic classes could be identified. Several gene clusters of interest were found when Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis (WGCNA) was applied to 4dpi contrasted with 0dpi data. The expression pattern of one such cluster of genes correlated with weight gain and WUR genotype, contained numerous immune response genes such as cytokines, chemokines, interferon type I stimulated genes, apoptotic genes and genes regulating complement activation. In addition, Partial Correlation and Information Theory (PCIT) identified differentially hubbed (DH) genes between the phenotypically divergent groups. GO enrichment revealed that the target genes of these DH genes are enriched in adaptive immune pathways. There are molecular differences in blood RNA patterns between pigs with extreme phenotypes or with a different WUR genotype in early responses to PRRSv infection, though they can be quite subtle and more difficult to discover with conventional DE expression analyses. Co-expression analyses such as WGCNA and PCIT can be used to reveal network differences between such extreme response groups. three timepoints from 100 animals are hibridized following a blocked reference design; Blood gene expression of pigs 4 days post infection

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Sarcoptes scabiei ES proteomics

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