Suspension culture of Neospora caninum using lymphocyte transformed by Theileria lestoquardi

Neospora caninum is one of main etiologic factors of abortion in  in cattle. The mass production of protozoa in laboratory conditions is performed based on growing in different cell lines. Since using suspension cell lines are very cost effective for mass production of biological products, this study aimed to evaluate the suspension cell culturing for production of this protozoan.

This study was experimentally performed bases on growth of N. caninum tachyzoites on Ka6 cell line (a cell line obtained from cattle infected with Theileria lestoquardi, Razi Institute, Shiraz, Iran. Next, based on MTT assay, ability of this cell culture for production of  N. caninum was compared with  Vero cell as the best current cell line for this purpose.

The results showed that N. caninum tachyzoites could enter into K6a cell lines and after replication released from the cells successfully. Replication of the tachyzoites was significant in both Vero and K6a cell lines in compare to the control.

To our knowledge, this is the first and successful report of suspension culture of N. caninum tachyzoites. Although, the rate of N. caninum proliferation on Ka6 cell line did not show any significant difference in compare to Vero cell line, since Ka6 cell line is a transformed lymphocytic cell and it is possible to grow massively this cell line as suspension bioreactors, it is preferred to Vero cell line.