High-Throughput Screening of Drugs Against the Growth of Cryptosporidium parvum In Vitro by qRT-PCR

An effective method to quantify the parasite loads is the key to the evaluation of anti-cryptosporidial drug efficacy in vitro. However, high-throughput screening (HTS) of drugs against Cryptosporidium parvum in vitro was impractical by the labor-intensive traditional assays. Here we describe a simplified quantitative RT-PCR assay suitable for HTS of compounds and for evaluating drug efficacy against the growth of C. parvum in vitro.