Rhea J. LongleyKarolis BauzaKatie J. EwerAdrian V.S. HillAlexandra J. SpencerUniversity of OxfordWalter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical ResearchMahidol UniversityUniversity of Melbourne2018-11-232018-11-232015-03-30PLoS ONE. Vol.10, No.3 (2015)193262032-s2.0-84926334122https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/20.500.14594/35182© 2015 Longley et al. The development of an efficacious vaccine against the Plasmodium parasite remains a top priority. Previous research has demonstrated the ability of a prime-boost virally vectored sub-unit vaccination regimen, delivering the liver-stage expressed malaria antigen TRAP, to produce high levels of antigen-specific T cells. The liver-stage of malaria is the main target of T cell-mediated immunity, yet a major challenge in assessing new T cell inducing vaccines has been the lack of a suitable pre-clinical assay. We have developed a flow-cytometry based in vitro T cell killing assay using a mouse hepatoma cell line, Hepa1-6, and Plasmodium berghei GFP expressing sporozoites. Using this assay, P. berghei TRAP-specific CD8+T cell enriched splenocytes were shown to inhibit liver-stage parasites in an ef-fector- to-target ratio dependent manner. Further development of this assay using human hepatocytes and P. falciparum would provide a new method to pre-clinically screen vaccine candidates and to elucidate mechanisms of protection in vitro.Mahidol UniversityAgricultural and Biological SciencesBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular BiologyArticleSCOPUS10.1371/journal.pone.0119880