>Hi
>>My name is Ericka Saffell and I am a student at Carroll College in
>Waukesha WI. I am taking Immunology right now, along with a course in
>Parasitology. I am very curious to find out if anyone has any
>information on the Immune responses of Schistosoma, not necissarily the
>host response to the parasite, but the immunity of the parasite itself.
>I would like to do my immunology research paper on this topic.
>>Thank you for your help.
>>Ericka Saffell
>Carroll College
>eksaffel at cc.edu
Ericka,
I am not aware of somebody who works on the immunity of the parasite
itself, but there is a weak indication that schistosmes might possess
cytotoxic peptides which could be active against microorganisms.
K. Hancock et al. (J. Parasitol 1997, Aug; 83(4): 612-618) described an
antigen which is useful for the detection of S. mansoni and S. haematobium
antibodies.
It turns out out that this molecule has homology to the family of
saposin-like proteins, an evolutionary conserved class of cytotoxic
peptides which belong to the innate immune system (Tschopp and Hofmann
Trends Microbiol. 1996, March vol 4(3) :91-94)
Hope this helps a little bit,
Christoph
