Leishmania infection and virulence

Leishmaniasis is among the most important infectious diseases of the developing world. With the advent of effective culture conditions for the various stages of the life cycle, together with state of the art biochemical, genomics, and reverse genetic approaches, it has been possible to identify virulence factors required for the infection process. Several of these virulence factors are discussed within including lipophosphoglygan, A2, cysteine proteinases, and gp63.