Juliana Ferreira de Santana
Universidade Federal do Parana, Brazil
Title: Linear peptides of Mycobacterium leprae antigens identified by SPOT synthesis indicate possible targets for serum diagnosis of leprosy
Biography
Biography: Juliana Ferreira de Santana
Abstract
Leprosy is a chronic granulomatous infection that affects the skin, nasal mucosa and peripheral nerves caused by the Gram-positive and obligate intracellular Bacillus, Mycobacterium leprae. The clinical manifestation of the infection with M. leprae will depends on the immune condition of the host. To become the multidrug choice therapy easier, according to WHO, the disease is divided into two categories: Paucibacillary and multibacillary leprosy. The paucibacillary patients present low antibody titers and predominant cell-mediated immunity. Contrastingly, multibacillary patients have a cell-mediated immunity inefficient with high antibody titers to M. leprae antigens. It will be interesting to identify and characterize biomarkers and antigens for a nearly diagnosis of leprosy of both categories of patients. Thus, our strategy was to realize an epitope mapping of seven proteins from M. leprae by using an array-based oligo-pepdide scanning (SPOT synthesis) onto a cellulose membrane probed for reactivity with sera from leprosy patients. No protein has reactivity with sera from healthy volunteers while four proteins have shown reactive spots when assayed with sera from leprosy patients. One of them was the 85B antigen from M. leprae previously identified by our group as an immunodominant protein after being mimicked by conformational peptides (mimotopes) by using Phage Display. After chemical synthesis, we hope the linear peptides found here could identify leprosy patients by simple assays like as ELISA, independently of their categories.