Roadmap for development of diagnostic tests for helminths

What are we trying to achieve and why? What is the problem we are trying to solve?

• Establish if an infection is recent or chronic using antigens that are specific for different stages of the parasite
• Detect pre-patent infections and/or infections with pathogenic versus non-pathogenic stages.

What are the scientific and technological challenges (knowledge gaps needing to be addressed)?

• Incomplete knowledge of stage-specific antigens of the different helminth species.
• Difficult to obtain specific different parasite stages from hosts to undertake research to identify stage-specific antigens.
• Better genomic and proteomic resources needed to identify stage specific antigens.
• Complexity of expression patterns of different antigens which may include variance with immune status and other phylsiological effects.

What approaches could/should be taken to address the research question?

• Detailed transcriptomic and proteomic analysis of stage specific antigens from each parasitic stage of the major helminth species.
• Detailed analysis of secretomes of different parasite stages including episome analysis under in vitro and in vivo under different immune and physiological conditions.
• Detailed characterisation of humoral and cellular immune responses to stage-specific antgens.
• Detailed biochemical analysis of parasite extracts that are currently used in diagnostics to identify individual antigens that could be more species- and/or stage-specific.

What else needs to be done before we can solve this need?

• High quality reference genomes for major target helminth species.
• Better fundamental knowledge of helminth biology and host-parasite interactions,
• Better knowledge of the immune responses to various helminth stages

Existing knowledge including successes and failures