WorldLeish6 Award Winners

Last May we opened a call for papers for a PLOS Collection on Leishmaniasis to accompany the 6th World Leish Congress (WL6) which took place in Toledo, Spain in May, 2017. The conference and the collection were a great success, with over 50 research articles included and more still to come – the call for papers remains open for the next two months.

The WL6 Scientific Committee identified a series of major topics that provided the background to the main scientific sessions during the congress, and the organizers wanted like to celebrate a Jubilee of Leishmaniasis by inviting the scientific community to submit papers addressing “hot” topics within the major areas selected:

• Understanding the Parasite
• Developing New Tools for Treatment & Diagnosis
• Clinical and Experimental Aspects of Disease and Treatment/Prevention
• Epidemiology and Control
• Public Health and Social Sciences
• Funding

The 51 papers included in the Collection boast authors from 206 institutions worldwide and have so far been viewed a total of over 70,000 times.

10 articles were chosen as Award Winners by the WorldLeish6 Scientific Committee, based on the following criteria:

1. Originality
2. Scientific Importance
3. Methods
4. Statistical Soundness
5. Interpretation
6. Brevity and Clarity
7. Generalizable Knowledge

The winning papers are:

Cost-effectiveness of meglumine antimoniate versus miltefosine caregiver DOT for the treatment of pediatric cutaneous leishmaniasis

Brandon A. Berger, Alexandra Cossio, Nancy Gore Saravia, Maria del Mar Castro, Sergio Prada, Allison H. Bartlett, Mai T. Pho

Experimental infection and transmission of Leishmania by Lutzomyia cruzi (Diptera: Psychodidae): Aspects of the ecology of parasite-vector interactions

Everton Falcão de Oliveira, Elisa Teruya Oshiro, Wagner de Souza Fernandes, Paula Guerra Murat, Márcio José de Medeiros, Alda Izabel Souza, Alessandra Gutierrez de Oliveira, Eunice Aparecida Bianchi Galati

Compartmentalized Immune Response in Leishmaniasis: Changing Patterns throughout the Disease

Alhelí Rodríguez-Cortés, Eugenia Carrillo, Susanna Martorell, Felicitat Todolí, Ana Ojeda, Alba Martínez-Flórez, Alicia Urniza, Javier Moreno, Jordi Alberola

Apoptosis-like cell death in Leishmania donovani treated with KalsomeTM10, a new liposomal amphotericin B

Md. Shadab, Baijayanti Jha, Mohammad Asad, Makaraju Deepthi, Mohd. Kamran, Nahid Ali

Immune Activation and Bacterial Translocation: A Link between Impaired Immune Recovery and Frequent Visceral Leishmaniasis Relapses in HIV-Infected Patients

Maria Luciana Silva-Freitas, Glaucia Fernandes Cota, Talia S. Machado-de-Assis, Carmem Giacoia-Gripp, Ana Rabello, Alda M. Da-Cruz, Joanna R. Santos-Oliveira

Single locus genotyping to track Leishmania donovani in the Indian subcontinent: Application in Nepal

Keshav Rai, Narayan Raj Bhattarai, Manu Vanaerschot, Hideo Imamura, Gebreyohans Gebru, Basudha Khanal, Suman Rijal, Marleen Boelaert, Chiranjib Pal, Prahlad Karki, Jean-Claude Dujardin, Gert Van der Auwera

Exacerbated Leishmaniasis Caused by a Viral Endosymbiont can be Prevented by Immunization with Its Viral Capsid

Patrik Castiglioni, Mary-Anne Hartley, Matteo Rossi, Florence Prevel, Chantal Desponds, Daniel T. Utzschneider, Remzi-Onur Eren, Haroun Zangger, Livia Brunner, Nicolas Collin, Dietmar Zehn, F. Matthew Kuhlmann, Stephen M. Beverley, Nicolas Fasel, Catherine Ronet

Leishmaniavirus-Dependent Metastatic Leishmaniasis Is Prevented by Blocking IL-17A

Mary-Anne Hartley, Eliane Bourreau, Matteo Rossi, Patrik Castiglioni, Remzi Onur Eren, Florence Prevel, Pierre Couppié, Suzanne M. Hickerson, Pascal Launois, Stephen M. Beverley, Catherine Ronet, Nicolas Fasel

Leishmania HASP and SHERP Genes Are Required for In Vivo Differentiation, Parasite Transmission and Virulence Attenuation in the Host

Johannes S. P. Doehl, Jovana Sádlová, Hamide Aslan, Kateřina Pružinová, Sonia Metangmo, Jan Votýpka, Shaden Kamhawi, Petr Volf, Deborah F. Smith

Transcriptional Profiling in Experimental Visceral Leishmaniasis Reveals a Broad Splenic Inflammatory Environment that Conditions Macrophages toward a Disease-Promoting Phenotype

Fanping Kong, Omar A. Saldarriaga, Heidi Spratt, E. Yaneth Osorio, Bruno L. Travi, Bruce A. Luxon, Peter C. Melby

Corresponding authors of each paper will be contacted by the PLOS Collections team in due course to explain how to claim their prize.

PLOS, DNDi and the WorldLeish6 Committee would like to thank all the authors for submitting to the Collection.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment of contact collections[at]plos.org