Host cell cytosolic immune response during Plasmodium liver stage development

Recent years have witnessed a great gain in knowledge regarding parasite-host cell interactions during Plasmodium liver stage development. It is now an accepted fact that a large percentage of sporozoite invading a hepatocyte fail to form infectious merozoites. There appears to be a delicate balance between parasite survival and elimination and we now start to understand why this is so. Plasmodium liver stages replicate within the parasitophorous vacuole (PV), formed during invasion by invagination of the host cell plasma membrane. The main interface between the parasite and hepatocyte is the parasitophorous vacuole membrane (PVM) that surrounds the PV. Recently, it was shown that autophagy marker proteins decorate the PVM of Plasmodium liver stages and eliminate a proportion of parasites by an autophagy-like mechanism. Successfully developing Plasmodium berghei parasites are initially also labeled but in the course of development, they are able to control this host defense mechanism by shedding PVM material into the tubovesicular network (TVN), an extension of the PVM that releases vesicles into to the host cell cytoplasm. Better understanding of the molecular events at the PVM/TVN during parasite elimination could be the basis of new anti-malarial measures.