| Summary: | Schistosomiasis mainly occurs in developing countries and is the most important human helminth infection in terms of global mortality. This parasitic disease affects more than 200 million people worldwide and causes more than 250,000 deaths per year. Current schistosomiasis control strategies are mainly based on chemotherapy, but many researchers believe that the best long-term strategy for controlling schistosomiasis is a combination of drug treatment and immunization with an anti-schistosome vaccine. Consequently, significant effort has been dedicated to developing and characterizing an anti-schistosome vaccine. Over the last five years, considerable data have been generated regarding the genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics of Schistosoma mansoni. In the present study, we characterize the Sm10.3 protein and evaluate its potential to protect against S. mansoni infection in a murine model. We demonstrate that Sm10.3 is primarily expressed during the stages of the parasite life cycle that involve infection and disease development in the human host. Sm10.3 is located on the surface of the digestive epithelia of adult female worms, an important host/parasite interface. Moreover, the vaccination of mice with rSm10.3 confers partial protection against S. mansoni. Taken together, our data suggest that Sm10.3 may be a useful component of a multi-antigen vaccine against schistosomiasis.
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