Synedgen’s Director for Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Publishes New Research
Study suggests that anti-retroviral lectins have a modest potential for preventing or treating Trichomonas infections
August 31, 2015—Research conducted by Synedgen Inc.’s Director for Pharmaceutical Manufacturing and colleagues from University of California Los Angeles, Boston University School of Medicine, Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appears in PLOS One, the world’s first multidisciplinary Open Access journal.
Christopher Ryan PhD, of Synedgen, and Aparajita Chatterjee, Daniel M. Ratner, Patricia J. Johnson, Barry R. O’Keefe, W. Evan Secor, Deborah J. Anderson, Phillips W. Robbins, and John Samuelson, conducted the research described in Anti-Retroviral Lectins Have Modest Effects on Adherence of Trichomonas vaginalis to Epithelial Cells In Vitro and on Recovery of Tritrichomonas foetus in a Mouse Vaginal Model.
- vaginalis, a protozoan parasite, causes vaginitis and trichomoniasis in humans. Trichomoniasis is considered the most common sexually transmitted disease (STD). In the United States, an estimated 3.7 million people have the infection, but only about 30% develop any symptoms. Trichomoniasis is treated with a prescription antibiotic medication, either metronidazole or tinidazole.
- foetus, another protozoan parasite, impacts domestic animals and livestock. In both, it can cause prolonged diarrhea; in cattle, infertility and premature abortion. T. foetus is studied due to its impact on animal health and because it produces the most accurate animal model of vaginal disease.
The researchers evaluated the effects of anti-retroviral lectins, which are designed to prevent heterosexual transmission of HIV, on the adherence of Trichomonas to ectocervical cells and on Tritrichomonas infections in a mouse model.
The results suggest that the anti-retroviral lectins have a modest potential for preventing or treating human Trichomonas infections. The lectins cause Trichomonas to self-aggregate and precipitate. Topical application decreased the recovery of from the mouse vagina by 40 to 70 percent.
“This is an important paper and reflects the expertise of our Director for Pharmaceutical Manufacturing not only in the role of polysaccharides in infectious disease but also in characterizing and understanding complex carbohydrate structures, the key of our glycomics platform,” remarked Synedgen President Shenda Baker.
The article is available at: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0135340
This work was supported by the Boston University Flow Cytometry Core Facility, the National Institutes of Health, General Medical Science, GM031318 National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, AI105779. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.