Abstrakt
Parasitic protists cause some of the most well-known human and animal diseases such as malaria, toxoplasmosis, amoebic meningitis, sleeping sickness, leishmaniosis, and diarrheal illness of protozoan origin (e.g., amoebiasis, cryptosporidiosis, and giardiasis) [1]. While the nature of the diseases and the transmission modes (e.g., vector-borne, food-/water-borne, by contact or fomites) vary widely among parasitic protists, they generally constitute health management challenges and have a significant impact on the global economy.
Given the growing number of emerging and re-emerging diseases caused by parasitic protists, there is an urgent need to implement new strategies in vaccine development and therapeutic interventions. The causative agents of these diseases have evolved a wide range of unique adaptations to parasitism, leading to different strategies of invasion, proliferation, and survival within their hosts' appropriate niches, as well as transmission modes, which hampers our efforts to control them.
These traits allow them to manipulate the host (or its host cells), to modulate or evade the host's immune responses, and even to use host metabolic processes for their own benefit.