Evaluation of the antileishmanial effect of polyclonal antibodies and cationic antimicrobial peptides

ABSTRACT

Leishmaniasis is one of the tropical and subtropical diseases which, according to WHO, has the priority of control. The list of anti-leishmanial drugs is limited and requires side effects, high costs, and long-term treatments. Various species, parasite resistance, and simultaneous diseases are among the factors that affect the effectiveness of treatment. Due to these problems and based on satisfactory records of previous studies using antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) against infectious diseases, this study aimed to evaluate the antileishmanial effect of Leishmania-infected macrophage polyclonal antibody (LIMPA) with or without different concentrations (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 20, 40, 60, and 100 µg/ml) of CM11 and (40, 80, and 100 µg/ml) BufIIIb, two AMPs, in vitro and their therapeutic effects against CL of Balb/c mice. Results showed that LIMPA induced an anti-proliferative effect on Leishmania major growth in macrophages in vitro and intramacrophage-amastigotes in vivo. CM11 with IC50 of 8.73 and 10.10 μg/ml at 48 hours, and BufIIIb with IC50 of 66.83 and 80.26 μg/ml, at 24 hours showed the most significant inhibition of L. major promastigotes and amastigotes. In addition, the CM11 and BufIIIb, with a CC50 of 9.7 μg/ml and 40.34 μg/ml, showed the most significant inhibition effect on the J774.A1 cell line at 48 hours, respectively. In addition, in vivo experiments using LIMPA with a 0.01 mg/kg dosage showed a significant difference (p < 0.001) in the last week of the measurement compared to the control. The results of this study may be a promising prospect for further investigations.

KEYWORDS:

• Leishmania
• polyclonal antibodies
• cationic antimicrobial peptides
• AMP
• animal model

Acknowledgments

This study was performed at the Department of Parasitology and Mycology, School of Medicine, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran, with the grant awarded by the Research Vice-Presidency from Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran. The results reported in this article are part of a Ph.D. thesis under the last author’s supervision.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper.

Statement of Ethics

Ethical approval of animal care and injections were performed in the animal facility of the School of Medicine, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran, according to the university guidelines for animal care (IR.MUI.MED.REC.1398.119).

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Mahsa Esmaeilifallah: Investigation, Software, Formal analysis, Writing-Original Draft. Hossein Khanahmad: Conceptualization, Validation, Formal analysis, Writing & Editing. Zahra Ghayour Najafabadi: Resources, Data Curation, Writing & Editing. Sedighe Saberi: Methodology, Writing & Editing. Reza Kalantari: Investigation, Writing-Original Draft, Visualization. Seyed Hossein Hejazi: Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision, Validation, Writing & Editing.

Additional information

Funding

The study was conducted with the grant awarded by the Research Vice-Presidency from Isfahan University of Medical Sciences.