Dr. Frédéric Chevalier presented the Anderson Lab’s latest research on schistosomes at the Molecular Helminthology meeting in St. Louis. His talk, “Surveillance for praziquantel resistance alleles in African schistosome populations,” focused on efforts to track genetic changes in Schistosoma haematobium that may threaten the efficiency of praziquantel, the only available treatment for schistosomiasis.
Our team has established collaboration in East and West African countries to collect 56,500 miracidia collected from over 2,000 patients in 32 villages. Pools of hundreds of miracidia were shipped to our lab and we used an exome capture approach targeting all 37 exons of the gene of the recently identified praziquantel target, the TRPMPZQ channel, coupled with very high read-depth sequencing to measure allele frequencies with high accuracy and efficiency. This large-scale surveillance effort will help evaluate whether drug resistance contributes to schistosomiasis “hotspots” frequently observed in the field. Dr. Chevalier’s presentation highlighted the importance of molecular monitoring to safeguard praziquantel’s effectiveness and support global disease control programs.
Congratulations to Fred for an excellent presentation!