Plasmodium falciparum News and Research

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Researchers demonstrate how Plasmodium falciparum can able to circumvent action of artemisinin

Researchers from CNRS, INSERM and Toulouse University Hospital have demonstrated how the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which causes severe forms of malaria, is able to circumvent the action of artemisinin and its derivatives, which are today the first-line drugs used to treat this disease. This study supplies some important findings that will enable a clearer understanding of the mechanisms of resistance to antimalarial drugs and the testing of novel therapeutic strategies in a context where the drug resistance of parasites is of increasing concern.

6 May 2010

Tulane University researchers urge action to eliminate malaria from Hispaniola

In an editorial in the May 2010 issue of the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Tulane University malaria researchers urge action to eliminate malaria from Hispaniola, the last island in the Caribbean where the disease occurs regularly.

29 Apr 2010

McGill researchers receive $1.7M for 10 cutting-edge research projects

Ten McGill University researchers received an important boost today, by way of the announcement of $1.7 million in new funding awarded through the Canada Foundation for Innovation's Leaders Opportunity Fund. "CFI investments are critical for our research leaders, to ensure that their research remains innovative and second to none," said Dr. Rima Rozen, Interim Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations) at McGill.

24 Apr 2010

Genocea Biosciences, NMRC sign CRADA to develop vaccine against malaria

Genocea Biosciences, a leading vaccine discovery and development company, today announced that it has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the Naval Medical Research Center. NMRC will collaborate with Genocea to identify antigens that will be used in the development of a vaccine candidate against Plasmodium falciparum for the prevention of malaria.

16 Apr 2010

Study confirms blood-stage infection is due to population mixing and disease evolution

In a paradigm changing discovery, Plasmodium vivax (P. vivax) malaria has been identified in a population historically thought to be resistant to the disease, those who do not express the Duffy blood group protein on their red blood cells, according to researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Pasteur Institute, and the Madagascar Ministry of Health.

16 Mar 2010

Researchers take first step in development of vaccine against pregnancy-associated malaria

By managing to express the protein that enables red blood cells infected with the malaria agent Plasmodium falciparum to bind to the placenta and by deciphering its molecular mechanisms, a team of researchers from CNRS and the Institut Pasteur has taken an important first step in the development of a vaccine against pregnancy-associated malaria.

10 Mar 2010

CDC confirms 11 malaria cases in people who traveled to Haiti

The CDC on Thursday said it confirmed that 11 cases of Plasmodium falciparum malaria "among emergency personnel and Haitian residents who traveled to the U.S.," the Miami Herald reports. "The cases include: seven emergency responders, including six military personnel; three Haitian residents who traveled to the U.S., including one Haitian adoptee; and one U.S. traveler," the newspaper writes (Tasker, 3/5).

6 Mar 2010

NIH awards Sanaria Phase II SBIR grant to develop genetically attenuated, whole parasite malaria vaccine

Sanaria Inc. has received additional support from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health in the form of a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grant. The three-year award totaling approximately $3 million will support collaborative research by investigators at Sanaria and Columbia University.

23 Feb 2010

NHMRC awards $12.7 million for malaria research

A research program that aims to better understand malaria infection and develop treatments and vaccines for the disease has today been awarded $12.7 million (US$11.5 million) by Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

22 Feb 2010

Study: Researchers use genomics to decode blueprint of Plasmodium falciparum

Scientists battling malaria have earned a major victory. According to a Nature Genetics study, an international group of researchers has used genomics to decode the blueprint of Plasmodium falciparum - a strain of malaria most resistant to drugs that causes the most deaths around the world.

17 Feb 2010

Also in global health news: N. Korea harvest; Zimbabwe’s health system; malaria parasite; training India's rural health workers; Myanmar recovery; health in Uganda

ZimOnline examines Zimbabwe's health system, which the country's health minister, Henry Madzorera, says has improved, but is still in need of additional progress.

11 Feb 2010

Antimalarial medicines in African countries are substandard, says QAMSA study

The first results from a large-scale study of key antimalarial medicines in ten Sub-Saharan African countries reveal that a high percentage of medicines circulating on national markets are of substandard quality and thus may contribute to the growth of drug-resistant strains of Plasmodium falciparum, the most virulent form of malaria.

10 Feb 2010

Findings of poor quality malaria drugs in Africa add to artemisinin-resistance worries

A study released on Monday found that between 26 percent and 44 percent of artemisinin-based malaria drugs sold in Madagascar, Senegal and Uganda "failed quality testing" because of impurities or insufficient amounts of active ingredient, the Associated Press reports.

10 Feb 2010

Breakthrough research could lead to new potential treatments for malaria

Groundbreaking research done at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) School of Biological Sciences (SBS) could lead to the development of more potent drugs or a vaccine for malaria, which is transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes and kills up to three million people each year.

6 Feb 2010

Postdoctoral scientists receive prestigious award; grants totaling $1.54 million will help in funding innovative projects

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on supporting exceptional early career researchers and innovative cancer research, named 11 new Damon Runyon Fellows at its November 2009 Fellowship Award Committee review.

22 Jan 2010

UCI finding could complicate quest to eradicate deadly disease in humans

Chimpanzees were known to carry the parasite Plasmodium reichenowi, but most scientists assumed the two parasites had existed separately in humans and chimpanzees for the last 5 million years.

20 Jan 2010

New findings support the development of vaccine against malaria

Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researchers have uncovered a group of proteins that could form the basis of an effective vaccine against malaria.

19 Jan 2010

PATH MVI announces collaboration in development of malaria TBV

The PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) today announced a new collaboration to initiate development toward a vaccine that may eventually help eliminate and eradicate malaria. This collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) and the Sabin Vaccine Institute (Sabin) marks MVI's first investment in transmission-blocking vaccines (TBVs). This vaccine approach aims to stop the malaria parasite from developing in the mosquito, effectively blocking transmission of malaria from mosquitoes to humans. Malaria kills nearly 900,000 people per year, most of them children younger than age five.

18 Jan 2010

NIH awards $14.6M for Eukaryotic Pathogen Genome Database Resource expansion

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Georgia have been awarded a five-year, $14.6 million contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the US National Institutes of Health, to expand and extend work on the Eukaryotic Pathogen Genome Database Resource, http://EuPathDB.org.

11 Dec 2009

Antimalarial drug resistance endangers malarial control measures

Evidence of resistance to the antimalarial drug artemisinin and its derivatives threatens efforts to control malaria in Southeast Asia, and experts fear artemisinin resistance may spread from the Thailand-Cambodia border to affect other malaria endemic countries. Evidence to such effect was presented today at the 58th annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH).

20 Nov 2009