Fig. 5

Gliding motility and hepatocyte invasion assay in the presence of compounds. a Compounds 24 and 42 impair the ability of P. berghei sporozoites to glide on glass coverslips. The total height of bars represent the percentage of sporozoites that were motile (produced one or more trails on a glass slide) during the assay period. Untreated sporozoites produce >10 trails under the assay conditions. As shown here, sporozoites treated with compounds 24 or 42 were less motile overall and produced fewer trails than the DMSO controls. In this experiment, treatment with DMSO, compound 24, or compound 42 produced 85, 33, and 38 % motile sporozoites, respectively. Fluorescent microscopy images of a representative sporozoite (green crescent) and its gliding path (green spirals) for three assay treatments: DMSO control (left), compound 24 (centre), and compound 42 (right). Sporozoite trails were visualized using a biotinylated antibody to CSP. While some sporozoites treated with compounds 24 or 42 did produce >10 trails, most of them produced no or few trails as shown here. b HepG2 liver invasion assay in the presence of small molecules. Compounds 18, 24, and 42 produced 58.9, 95.6 and 34 % inhibition of invasion, respectively. Note the logarithmic scale. c Real time PCR of the host cell GAPDH mRNA was used as a control for equal amounts present in each assay.