Innate immune sensing of Plasmodium sporozoite cell traversal drives protective T cell responses.

Plasmodium sporozoite cell traversal triggers innate immune responses that are essential for protective T cell activation, with traversal-deficient SPZs failing to prime immunity in mice.

• Why it matters: Understanding how attenuated Plasmodium sporozoites activate innate immunity is crucial for improving malaria vaccine strategies, as their immune engagement remains poorly characterized.
• What they did: Researchers isolated GFP+ Plasmodium berghei and Plasmodium falciparum sporozoites and used bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing to assess innate immune activation in mouse macrophages and human blood cells, comparing normal and traversal-deficient SPZs.
• The result: The study found that SPZs induce a cell wounding response independent of inflammasome or Toll-like receptor pathways, requiring γδ T cells, which supports CD8+ T cell responses and underpins the immunogenicity of SPZ-based vaccines.