Patent ID: 8367810

Claim:
A method for purification of a species of metabolically active Plasmodium sporozoites that causes human disease, said method comprising: (a) providing an aqueous pre-purification preparation comprising sporozoites and attendant non-sporozoite material; (b) passing said sporozoite preparation sequentially through a set of size exclusion filters comprising: (i) a first exclusion matrix filter with a pore size capable of retaining attendant material larger than 10 microns but allowing passage of said sporozoites; (ii) a second exclusion matrix filter with a pore size capable of retaining attendant material larger than about 1.2 microns but allowing passage of said sporozoites; and (iii) a third membrane filter with a pore size capable of passing material 1.2 microns or smaller and allowing passage of said sporozoites; (c) collecting substantially purified sporozoites by dead end filtration on a collecting filter with a pore size capable of retaining said sporozoites; and (d) removing the collected substantially purified sporozoites from the collecting filter, thereby producing a purified sporozoite preparation that is substantially free of attendant non-sporozoite material.