Home Sweet Home: Plasmodium vivax-Infected Reticulocytes—The Younger the Better?

After a century of constant failure to produce an in vitro culture of the most widespread human malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax , recent advances have highlighted the difficulties to provide this parasite with a healthy host cell to invade, develop, and multiply under in vitro conditions. The actual level of understanding of the heterogeneous populations of cells—framed under the name ‘reticulocytes’—and, importantly, their adequate in vitro...