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Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

Daily Overview

Session

CP18: Cells, Molecules & Genes 3 - 10 min talks
Location: Lecture Theatre 1
Session Chair: Shilpa Kapoor, The University of Melbourne
Session Chair: Balu Balan, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute

Presentation 1

In vitro studies support early Ascaris infection driven by specific chemotactic attraction to host liver

Pradip Roy^1,2, Joy Liu², Peter Thurgood³, Amrita Vijay^1,2, Louise Baker^1,2, Balu Balan^1,2, Khashayar Khoshmanesh³, Aaron Jex^1,2

1: Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Parkville, VIC 3052, Australia; 2: Department of Medical Biology, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia; 3: School of Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Ascaris spp. infect approximately 804 million people, causing substantial malnutrition, stunting and morbidity in school-aged children in low-income populations, exceeding 750,000 Disability Adjusted Life-Years annually. Current single-dose oral anthelmintics offer no sustained protection nor interruption of transmission. Interventions that prevent infection are needed. During early infection, Ascaris larvae migrate from the host intestine to the liver and lung before maturation in the small intestine. This process is thought to be passively directed by host blood flow; however, multiple studies suggest active chemotaxis. Here, we use larval agar migration assays and microfluidic chemotaxis arenas to demonstrate that freshly-hatched Ascaris suum larvae exhibit liver-specific chemotaxis in vitro, including increased migration distance, speed, and directional movement toward liver gradients, and reduced turning behaviours, relative to lung or RPMI controls. These responses coincided with specific transcriptional up-regulation of chemotaxis receptors, signalling markers and metabolic pathways in liver relative to lung or RPMI. Our findings provide strong evidence of organ-specific, active chemotaxis in Ascaris infection, with implications for other major human helminthiases, and identify conserved chemosensory pathways as promising therapeutic targets. Disrupting chemosensory-guided navigation could prevent larval migration, offering a novel strategy to combat ascariasis.