Malaria

Brian Foy of Colorado State University in the U.S. will use antibodies that bind essential proteins in the mosquito Anopheles in order to block malaria transmission. They have already produced antibodies that bind conserved mosquito antigens such as the glutamate-gated chloride channel and used them to supplement blood meals, which was lethal to feeding mosquitoes. They will test whether cattle injected with these antigens produce the corresponding antibodies that are also lethal to the mosquitoes that feed off them.

Flaminia Catteruccia of President and Fellows of Harvard College in the U.S. will produce fabrics and nets treated with the dibenzoylhydrazine (DBH) compound methoxyfenozide, which is toxic to malaria-transmitting mosquitoes, to prevent these insects from entering households and spreading disease. The compound is non-toxic to mammals but disrupts steroid signaling pathways in the mosquito, which is a different mechanism than existing insecticides, reducing lifespan and causing sterility.

Yan Shi of Tsinghua University in China will use single-cell force spectroscopy to detect changes in red blood cells infected with the malaria parasite with the goal of developing methods to target antimalarial drugs specifically to infected cells.

Chun Huh from the University of Texas at Austin in the U.S. will develop a malaria diagnostic test that can detect low levels of the parasite in saliva samples for use in resource-poor settings. Diagnosing malaria usually requires taking blood, which can be unsafe, difficult to do in children, and forbidden in certain cultures. Non-invasive tests that use saliva exist but are not sensitive enough to detect everyone with the disease or they require expensive and complex methods to increase the sensitivity.

Peter Lillehoj of Michigan State University in the U.S. will develop a low-cost skin patch that can rapidly and safely detect malaria. Current diagnostics for malaria generally require the extraction of blood, which is painful and prohibited in certain cultures. The patch will consist of an array of microneedles that painlessly collects interstitial fluid from just beneath the skin surface that is known to contain proteins from the malaria parasite in infected individuals. This sample will then be transferred to a lateral flow test strip that carries a malaria protein-specific antibody.

Oscar Noya at the Instituto de Medicina Tropical in Venezuela will develop a simple, low-cost test based on the detection of parasite antigens that can be used to diagnose malaria in low-resource settings. They have developed a multi-antigen blot assay that can diagnose 26 diseases at the same time using saliva or small volumes of blood at low cost without the need for specialized equipment. They will use bioinformatics tools to select synthetic peptides from the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum, and from other common pathogens such as HIV and dengue virus.

Steve Lindsay of the University of Durham in the United Kingdom will develop a non-invasive test to block the reemergence of malaria in disease-free regions by training dogs to identify specific odors that are released from people carrying the malaria parasite. It is known that people infected with the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum produce thioethers in their breath, possibly to attract mosquitoes so that the parasite can spread more quickly to other people, thereby promoting malaria transmission.

Ian Cockburn from the Australian National University in Australia will test two approaches to improve vaccines by increasing competition for the vaccine antigen by immune cells and prolonging the survival of those immune cells. Antibody-producing B cells develop in so-called germinal centers within lymph nodes in response to infections or vaccinations. However, many diseases including malaria lack effective vaccines.

Aaron Wheeler from the University of Toronto in Canada will develop a cost-effective, portable test that uses microfluidics to rapidly diagnose malaria from saliva samples. The digital microfluidic device is comprised of an array of electrodes over which droplets of samples and reagents can be moved around using a simple operating system. This allows the concentration of samples to enhance the specificity of the test, and the automation of an enzyme-linked immunosorbant assay to detect the presence of malaria antigens, along with a digital readout.

Stephen Rogerson from the University of Melbourne in Australia will develop a low-cost diagnostic using an electrical immunosensor platform that can detect very low levels of the malaria parasite in blood and saliva samples to aid malaria-elimination efforts. The platform detects changes in electrical impedance caused by the binding of two molecules, and they postulate that it can improve the limit of detection of current related diagnostic tests by up to 1000 fold.