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Blood, 15 November 2004, Vol. 104, No. 10, pp. 3372-3377.
Prepublished online as a Blood First Edition Paper on June 17, 2004; DOI 10.1182/blood-2004-03-1084.
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Submitted March 23, 2004
Accepted May 25, 2004
Characterization of the choline carrier of Plasmodium falciparum: a route for the selective delivery of novel antimalarial drugs
Giancarlo A Biagini, Erica M Pasini, Ruth Hughes, Harry P De Koning, Henri J Vial, Paul M O'Neill, Stephen A Ward, and Patrick G Bray*
Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology Group, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom
Division of Infection and Immunity, Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
CNRS UMR 5539, Universite Montpellier II, Montpellier, France
* Corresponding author; email: p.g.bray{at}liv.ac.uk.
There is an urgent requirement for new drugs to combat the growing problem of drug resistance in Plasmodium falciparum malaria. The infected erythrocyte is a multi-compartmental system and its transporters are of interest both as drug targets in their own right and as potential routes for the delivery of antimalarial drugs.
Choline is an important nutrient that penetrates infected erythrocyte membranes both via the endogenous carrier and via parasite-induced permeability pathways, but nothing is known about its transport into the intracellular parasite. Here we present the first characterization of choline transport across the parasite membrane. Transport exhibits Michaelis Menten kinetics with an apparent Km value of 25.0 ± 3.5 µM for choline. The carrier is inhibitor-sensitive, temperature-dependent, Na+-independent and is driven by the proton-motive force. Highly active bis-amidine and bis-quaternary ammonium compounds are also known to penetrate the host erythrocyte membrane via parasite-induced permeability pathways. Here, we demonstrate that the parasite choline transporter mediates the delivery of these compounds to the intracellular parasite. Thus the induced permeability pathways in the host erythrocyte membrane and the parasite choline transporter described here form a cooperative transport system that shows great promise for the selective targeting of new agents for the chemotherapy of malaria.

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