Plasmodium falciparum News and Research

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BioDiem signs agreement with RMIT to create new non-influenza vaccines

Australian infectious disease therapy and vaccine development company BioDiem Ltd (ASX: BDM) today announced that BioDiem has signed an agreement with The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) regarding a research program that will investigate the use of BioDiem’s live attenuated influenza virus (LAIV) to create new non-influenza vaccines. Developing the potential of the LAIV technology for new indications is an important part of BioDiem’s strategy, and this research is part of the work towards that goal.

19 Jul 2012

Intense war against malaria outlined by two studies in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

A pair of provocative studies in the July 2012 issue of The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (AJTMH) provides a window into the intense ground war now underway against malaria.

4 Jul 2012

Transgenic mosquitoes can control malaria

Mosquitoes bred to be unable to infect people with the malaria parasite are an attractive approach to helping curb one of the world's most pressing public health issues, according to UC Irvine scientists.

13 Jun 2012

New technique accurately determines infants at risk for malaria

A new technique that accurately determines the risk of infants in endemic countries developing clinical malaria could provide a valuable tool for evaluating new malaria prevention strategies and vaccines.

6 Jun 2012

New knowledge related to host-parasite interaction in severe malaria

Researchers from Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, the University of Copenhagen and the University of Edinburgh have uncovered new knowledge related to host-parasite interaction in severe malaria, concerning how malaria parasites are able to bind to cells in the brain and cause cerebral malaria - the most lethal form of the disease.

22 May 2012

Biologists engineer algae to produce potential candidates for malarial vaccine

Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have succeeded in engineering algae to produce potential candidates for a vaccine that would prevent transmission of the parasite that causes malaria, an achievement that could pave the way for the development of an inexpensive way to protect billions of people from one of the world's most prevalent and debilitating diseases. Initial proof-of-principle experiments suggest that such a vaccine could prevent malaria transmission.

17 May 2012

Drug resistance woes hamper anti-malaria fight

Researchers have found that there is increasing resistance to the front-line treatments for malaria. A pair of studies published in The Lancet and the journal Science showed how the disease is moving fast into new territory and identified a region of the parasite's genome that may be responsible for mutating in order to survive.

5 Apr 2012

IPT has an ongoing protective effect against malaria in infants

Malaria infections among infants can be cut by up to 30 per cent when antimalarial drugs are given intermittently over a 12 month period, a three-year clinical trial in Papua New Guinea has shown.

2 Apr 2012

P. falciparum colonizes America via two separate introduction routes: Study

The malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, originates from Africa, and is found on every continent. Over 200 million people are infected every year from Africa to Asia, as well as in America and the Middle East. How did it spread to the entire planet? It is not entirely clear how it conquered the New World. Scientists from the UMR Migevec and their partners have recently shown in the journal PNAS that the pathogen was introduced by ship during the slave trade.

29 Mar 2012

Simple and accurate device to study malaria

University of British Columbia researcher Hongshen Ma has developed a simple and accurate device to study malaria, a disease that currently affects 500 million people per year worldwide and claims a million lives.

29 Feb 2012

Novartis delivers 100 million child-friendly antimalarial treatments to 39 countries

One hundred million treatments of Coartem- Dispersible (artemether-lumefantrine), an antimalarial developed especially for children with Plasmodium falciparum malaria, have been delivered by Novartis to 39 malaria-endemic countries, Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) announced today.

23 Feb 2012

EMA grants positive scientific opinion for Pyramax to treat malaria

Pyramax-, a fixed-dose combination of pyronaridine and artesunate, becomes the first antimalarial to be granted a positive scientific opinion from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) under Article 58. This once daily, 3-day treatment is indicated for acute, uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum and blood-stage Plasmodium vivax malaria in adults and children over 20 kg.

22 Feb 2012

Researchers share libraries of chemical compounds to spur development of drug candidates

Nature reports how "in the hunt for drugs that target diseases in the developing world, ... pharmaceutical companies are making entire libraries of chemical compounds publicly available, allowing researchers to rifle through them for promising drug candidates."

16 Feb 2012

Study shows how malaria parasite changes into banana form before sexual reproduction

New research from the University of Melbourne shows how the malaria parasite (Plasmodium falciparum) changes into a banana shape before sexual reproduction, a finding that could provide targets for vaccine or drug development and may explain how the parasite evades the human immune system.

14 Feb 2012

New technique to overcome genetic oddity of P. falciparum

The parasite that causes malaria is a genetic outlier, which has prevented scientists from discovering the functions of most of its genes. Researchers at National Jewish Health and Yale University School of Medicine have devised a technique to overcome the genetic oddity of Plasmodium falciparum, the major cause of human malaria.

27 Jan 2012

New maps, online portal reveal current global pattern of malaria

A new suite of malaria maps has revealed in unprecedented detail the current global pattern of the disease, allowing researchers to see how malaria has changed over a number of years.

24 Jan 2012

PfSET10 molecule plays a crucial role in malaria infection

The discovery by researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of a molecule that is key to malaria's 'invisibility cloak' will help to better understand how the parasite causes disease and escapes from the defenses mounted by the immune system.

19 Jan 2012

Malaria vaccine shows early success

An experimental vaccine for malaria has been developed by British scientists. It has shown early potential to neutralize many, perhaps all, strains of the deadliest malaria parasite.

21 Dec 2011

University of Oxford scientists develop new candidate malaria vaccine

A new candidate malaria vaccine with the potential to neutralise all strains of the most deadly species of malaria parasite has been developed by a team led by scientists at the University of Oxford.

21 Dec 2011

BCX4945 proves effective at clearing malaria infections

An antimalarial agent developed by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University proved effective at clearing infections caused by the malaria parasite most lethal to humans - by literally starving the parasites to death. The novel research, carried out on a small number of non-human primates, could bolster efforts to develop more potent therapies against one of the world's leading killers.

8 Dec 2011