Vanessa I Francis, Corin Liddle, Emma Camacho, Madhura Kulkarni, Samuel R S Junior, Jamie A Harvey, Elizabeth R Ballou, Darren D Thomson, Gordon D Brown, J Marie Hardwick, Arturo Casadevall, Jonathan Witton, Carolina Coelho
Cryptococcus neoformans causes lethal meningitis and accounts for approximately 10%-15% of AIDS-associated deaths worldwide. There are major gaps in our understanding of how this fungus invades the mammalian brain. To investigate the dynamics of C. neoformans tissue invasion, we mapped fungal localization and host cell interactions in infected brain, lung, and upper airways using mouse models of systemic and airway infection. To enable this, we developed an in situ imaging pipeline capable of measuring large volumes of tissue while preserving anatomical and cellular information by combining thick tissue sections, tissue clarification, and confocal imaging...
March 21, 2024: MBio