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A study involving the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) the basis for the design of a vaccine to prevent the action of the parasites of the genus Ascaris, causing an infection of worms most common with a prevalence of around 25 percent of the world's population and particularly in children. Specifically, the research that is
published in PNAS, picking off one of the mechanisms that the parasite uses to resist the body's defenses infected.

The study, coordinated by researchers F. Xavier Gomis-Ruth, F. Xavier Avilés López and Joan Arolas, is a collaboration between groups of the Institute of Molecular Biology of Barcelona (CSIC) and Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.

As the researcher CSIC F. Xavier Gomis-Ruth, of the genus Ascaris worms can live in the intestines anchored for years and reach a length of 35 centimeters. "To resist in half as aggressive, these parasites have developed a range of strategies to evade the defense mechanisms of infected hosts," he adds. The researchers have analyzed one of these defense mechanisms: the production by the ACI worm inhibitor. This protein prevents the action of the infected person metalocarboxipeptidasas, enzymes housed in the gut that not only involved in digestive processes, but also in defending the body against pathogens by mast cells Key immune system of the human body.

Researchers have analyzed the distribution of the ACI inhibitor in different tissues and stages of evolution of the species of worm Ascaris suum, in addition to analyzing the three-dimensional structure of ICA in conjunction with a human carboxipeptidasa.

"All the data obtained in the work could lay the basis for developing new strategies to develop vaccines against these parasitic infections," concludes the researcher CSIC.