Study of visceral leishmaniasis establishment - Gene expression from (un)infected (non-)vaccinated mouse spleen samples

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) caused by Leishmania donovani and L. infantum is a potentially fatal disease. To date there are no registered vaccines for disease prevention despite the fact that several vaccines are in preclinical development. Thus, new strategies are needed to improve vaccine efficacy based on a better understanding of the mechanisms mediating protective immunity and mechanisms of host immune responses subversion by immunopathogenic components of Leishmania. In the present study, determination of the immune mechanisms related to infection or protective immune responses against VL using an experimental nanovaccine as a vaccine model was conducted through microarray analysis. For the 5 different conditions (4/16-weeks post challenge vaccinated/non-vaccinated mice and naïve, uninfected control mice), 10 samples were analyzed. Experiments were conducted in biological duplicate.