Differential Regulation of the Immune Response in the Spleen and Liver of Mice Infected with Leishmania donovani.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Tropical Medicine Volume 2012, Article ID 639304, 7 pages doi:10.1155/2012/639304 Review Article Differential Regulation of the Immune Response in the Spleen and Liver of Mice Infected with Leishmania donovani 1 ¨ 1, 2 Rashmi Bankoti and Simona Stager 1 Department of Molecular and Comparative Pathobiology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA 2 Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut Armand-Frappier, Laval, QC, Canada ¨ Correspondence should be addressed to Simona Stager, simona.stager@iaf.inrs.ca Received 12 April 2011; Accepted 21 May 2011 Academic Editor: Christian Engwerda ¨ Copyright © 2012 R. Bankoti and S. Stager. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Immunity to pathogens requires generation of effective innate and adaptive immune responses. Leishmania donovani evades these host defense mechanisms to survive and persist in the host. A better understanding and identification of mechanisms that L. donovani employs for its survival is critical for developing novel therapeutic interventions that specifically target the parasite. This paper will highlight some of the mechanisms that the parasite utilizes for its persistence and also discuss how the immune response is regulated. 1. Introduction addition to modifying DC and T-cell function, the parasite