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Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Stem Cells. Mar 26, 2016; 8(3): 88-100
Published online Mar 26, 2016. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v8.i3.88
Malaria modeling: In vitro stem cells vs in vivo models
Florian Noulin
Florian Noulin, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, The Kuvin Center for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, IMRIC, The Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem 91120, Israel
Author contributions: Noulin F performed the literature search and wrote the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The author declares no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Florian Noulin, PhD, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, The Kuvin Center for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, IMRIC, The Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Ein Kerem Campus, Jerusalem 91120, Israel. flo.noulin@mail.huji.ac.il
Telephone: +972-2-6757082 Fax: +972-2-6757244
Received: August 25, 2015
Peer-review started: August 28, 2015
First decision: December 4, 2015
Revised: January 8, 2016
Accepted: January 27, 2016
Article in press: January 29, 2016
Published online: March 26, 2016
Processing time: 209 Days and 14.6 Hours
Abstract

The recent development of stem cell research and the possibility of generating cells that can be stably and permanently modified in their genome open a broad horizon in the world of in vitro modeling. The malaria field is gaining new opportunities from this important breakthrough and novel tools were adapted and opened new frontiers for malaria research. In addition to the new in vitro systems, in recent years there were also significant advances in the development of new animal models that allows studying the entire cell cycle of human malaria. In this paper, we review the different protocols available to study human Plasmodium species either by using stem cell or alternative animal models.

Keywords: Malaria; Stem cells; In vitro models; Animal models; Humanized mice

Core tip: To better understand Plasmodium biology, researchers can whether proceed to in vitro studies or use in vivo models. Thanks to recent progresses, stem cells have been extensively employed to study Plasmodium liver and blood cycle in vitro. In parallel, the development of animal models opened new opportunities to study parasite biology in vivo. In this review, I go through and discuss the different available protocols using stem cells for modeling malaria in vitro as well as available animal models. This review has for goal to decipher which system would be the more suitable to study the parasite biology.