News Archive
22 Feb 2012
Last week Nature published a story looking at the role data sharing has played in the fight against malaria. It looks how the publication of details for thousands of molecules, shown to inhibit Plasmodium falciparum in some way, by GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis in 2010, has facilitated the development of potential drugs to combat malaria...
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19 Jan 2012
Part of what makes malaria difficult to tackle is its ability to hide from the human immune system. Today, research has been published in the journal Cell Host and Microbe that brings us a step closer to understanding how this is achieved by the parasite. The research has identified a molecule in Plasmodium falciparum, called PfSET10 that plays a role in the genetic control of the...
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11 Jan 2012
The latter part of 2011 saw some significant malaria breakthroughs:
In November research was published in Nature identifying a receptor-ligand pair involved in the cellular recognition process that allows the Plasmodium falciparum parasite to invade red blood cells. It was found that basigin, a receptor on the surface of red blood cells, can be activated by PfRh5, a parasite protein involved in...
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28 Oct 2011
This month has seen the early results from the on-going Phase III clinical trial of malaria vaccine candidate RTS,S/AS01 come through, and they are promising.
The trial was conducted across 11 sites in seven sub-Saharan African countries. It has shown that giving three doses of RTS,S/AS01 to children aged 5 to 17 months, reduced the risk of the child experiencing clinical malaria and severe...
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20 Sep 2011
We are pleased to report that Dr Julie Makani has been awarded the Royal Society Pfizer Award for her outstanding research into using anaemia in sickle cell disease (SCD) as a model for translating genetic research into health benefits. Dr Makani is a Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellow in Public Health and Tropical Medicine, based in the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in...
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19 Aug 2011
Research published online this week in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, highlights the issue of mosquitos becoming resistance to insecticide-treated bed nets. The paper titled “Malaria morbidity and pyrethroid resistance after the introduction of insecticide-treated bednets and artemisinin-based combination therapies: a longitudinal study” looks at how malaria morbidity, mosquito populations...
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4 Aug 2011
The Wellcome Trust has launched a call for proposals as part of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) Initiative, the partnership between the African Society of Human Genetics, the NIH and the Wellcome Trust which aims to develop African research networks.
Awards from the Wellcome Trust will be made to African institutions; the principal applicant will be an African citizen or...
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20 May 2011
A human genetic variant associated with an almost 30 percent reduced risk of developing severe malaria has been identified. Scientists from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM), Hamburg, and Kumasi University, Ghana, reveal that a variant at the FAS locus can prevent an excessive and potentially hazardous immune response in infected children.
FAS encodes for CD95, a molecule...
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17 May 2011
A letter titled “Host-mediated regulation of superinfection in malaria” has been published this week on the Nature Medicine website. The authors use a mouse model to show that ongoing blood stage infections, when above a minimum threshold, are able to impair the reproduction of other malaria parasites in the liver, preventing them from developing into blood stage parasites. The...
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11 Apr 2011
Research published today in PLoS Pathogens has confirmed that human Plasmodium knowlesi infections are being passed over from infected macaque monkey populations in Malaysian Borneo, and not transmitted human to human.
The study was led by Professor Balbir Singh at the Malaria Research Centre, University Malaysia Sarawak, collaborating with Sarawak State Health Department, St George's...
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4 Nov 2010
In a study funded by the Wellcome Trust, geographers, biologists and statisticians at the University of Oxford, together with colleagues from the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya, have produced the first detailed global map showing the distribution of the sickle-cell gene. The results are published with open access in the journal 'Nature Communications'
The study aimed to document...
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6 Jul 2010
The aim of The Human Heredity and Health in Africa Project (H3Africa) is to support African scientists conducting population-based genetic studies, in Africa, of common, non-communicable disorders, for instance heart disease and cancer, and communicable diseases like malaria. The African Society for Human Genetics will help to organise researchers in Africa. The researchers that...
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15 Jun 2010
A Wellcome Trust Advanced Course is to be held on Genomic Epidemiology in Africa at the KEMRI/Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi, Kenya from 28 Nov - 3 Dec 2010. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have become a powerful tool for obtaining clues to the genetics of resistance and susceptibility to disease. This computer-based course, will follow the experimental process; starting...
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20 Apr 2010
MapSeq, an interactive web-based database of genome variation in the malaria parasite, has recently been launched. As described in the international IT magazine WIRED: “The latest anti-malaria weapon is not a drug -- it's data. If you can sequence the genomes of thousands of malaria parasites and of the Anopheles mosquitoes that carry them, you can spot genetic mutations that can...
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2 Feb 2010
Researchers working with MalariaGEN have published a new review; “Methodological challenges of genome-wide association analysis in Africa”. The review discusses how genome-wide association (GWA) studies in Africa have the potential to give valuable insights into infectious and non-communicable diseases. GWA studies in Africa have some methodological challenges that are not usually...
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24 Nov 2009
Researchers from the MalariaGEN Consortium have published a new paper in PLoS Medicine discussing the MalariaGEN Data Release Policy. The paper highlights the challenges in generating an ethical data release policy that acknowledges the interests of all stakeholders involved in genome-wide association studies, and discusses how MalariaGEN sought to address these.
The paper was also...
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2 Nov 2009
MalariaGEN hosted a Symposium 'Toward Genomic Epidemiology of Malaria: Progress, Challenges, and Potential' at the Multi-Lateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM) Conference in Nairobi on November 2nd, 2009.
The session focused on how large-scale studies of genome variation in developing countries pose new scientific, ethical and practical challenges; yet offer an unprecedented opportunity to...
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1 Nov 2009
The world's largest malaria conference opened today with a call for substantial and sustained support for research to guide evidence-based policies and the development of new malaria tools, which together could save countless lives.
The 5th Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM) Pan-African Conference brings together 2,000 researchers, health workers, public health officials, policymakers...
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5 Aug 2009
MalariaGEN partners across 14 malaria-endemic countries have worked with local communities to recruit over 50,000 samples in the last 4 years. Each partner has designed and implemented their own local study into the natural mechanisms of resistence to malaria. Learn more about the challenges faced and experiences gained by these partners.
MalariaGEN data fellows share their experiences in the...
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6 Jul 2009
MalariaGEN's Consortial Project 2 aims to understand the functional effects of genetic variation on the immune response to malaria. Eight partners in malaria-endemic countries are involved and new study descriptions are now available which provide information on the study populations, morbidity, infection densities and clinical data. These sites are:
Burkina Faso: The Centre National de...
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28 Jun 2009
The National Academy of Pharmacy of France has awarded Dr Abdoulaye Djimdé its "Prix de la Pharmacie Francophone". Dr Djimdé is a research scientist from the Malaria Research and Training Center (MRTC), University of Bamako, and Malian EDCTP Senior Fellow. The prize is in recognition of his outstanding contribution within the Francophone community. The Award was presented to Dr Djimdé in the...
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1 Jun 2009
A study of children with malaria in The Gambia, West Africa, has provided new insights into how to conduct genetic studies of common diseases in African populations, which are far more genetically-diverse than European or Asian populations.
Scientists believe that a wide range of genetic factors affect an individual's ability to resist malaria, and MalariaGEN researchers are attempting to...
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7 Jan 2009
MalariaGEN's first paper was published in Nature on December 11th 2008. The Commentary Article A global network for investigating the genomic epidemiology of malaria explores how MalariaGEN has used a consortial approach to overcome the challenges of undertaking genome wide association studies of malaria.
The paper describes how MalariaGEN established a global research network, how the...
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28 Nov 2008
A keystone of MalariaGEN's scientific programme is to use genome-wide association (GWA) analysis to discover genes that determine resistance to severe malaria. This is the focus of Consortial Project 1, which includes study sites in 11 malaria-endemic countries.
GWA studies of malaria present many methodological challenges, which largely arise from the great genetic diversity of African...
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