Mycobacterium ulcerans is an environmental pathogen responsible for the devastating emerging neglected disease Buruli Ulcer. Despite generous strides in the last 20 years in the understanding of this unique bacterium's role in the environment and pathogenesis much remains to be learned concerning the bacilli's virulence mechanisms and markedly long persistence virtually undetected within the host during colonization. Despite harboring classic antigenic molecules unique to the Mycobacterial cell envelope M. ulcerans seems to be cloaked in a sense making the bacterial cells less detectable by innate host defenses. Elucidating the properties of bacterial pathogens that promote in vivo survival requires performance of host-pathogen experiments and thus requires a supply of host immune cells and systems to facilitate host-pathogen interactions that appropriately recapitulate in vivo interactions. The following research details hypothesis driven experimentation to show that M. ulcerans takes advantage of a unique toxin and possibly Extra-Cellular Matrix property to evade host innate immunity, suggests a role for the lipidic toxin harbored by M. ulcerans, Mycolactone, arguing that it may in fact be an accident albeit extremely potent cytotoxin, employs Human Embryonic Stem Cells differentiated into immunocompetent leukocytes, and lays the foundation for microfluidic based host-pathogen interaction studies.
