Funding Fresh Ideas to Stop Malaria

Almost one million people died of malaria in Africa in 2006, according to the World Health Organization. Stopping this devastating disease requires a new set of tools, some of which might include mosquito-killing drugs, drugs designed to evade parasite resistance, or perhaps even mosquito-immobilizing lasers.

In an effort to halt the spread of infections, health groups are marking tomorrow, April 25, as the second World Malaria Day. To encourage breakthrough research in public health, the Gates Foundation sponsors a set of $100,000 grants to fund high-risk, high-return pilot studies, some of which focus on on new ways of stopping the parasite which, according to foundation officials, kills someone every 30 seconds.

To highlight some of this research, the foundation hosted a blogger conference call yesterday with three of the grant recipients.

Brian Foy, an assistant professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology, at Colorado State University, used his funding to explore the potential of using endectocides, drugs that combat parasitic worms, to also stop mosquitoes. Malaria takes between 10 and 14 days to develop inside a mosquito before it is transmittable to another person, and that presents a window in which to kill the bugs. Foy tracked mosquitoes in Senegal and found that those that had bitten people taking ivermectin, an endectocide used to combat river blindness, died for up to a week. Thus, the drug has to potential to stop two infections at once.

“If you could just make one of those blood meals toxic to the mosquito, you could kill it before it’s able to transmit the disease,” Foy explained. “These same drugs that people are taking to clear out their worms could also be used to kill these mosquitoes.” His data is preliminary, and dosing would have to be adjusted to ensure that mosquitoes got a fatal portion endectocide but did not develop resistance. Christine Gorman at Global Health Report explains the technique further.

Szabolcs Marka, an assistant professor of experimental astrophysics at Columbia University, took a radically different approach in his preventative experiments. He studied the sensory systems of the mosquito species that are vectors for malaria and designed laser barriers that disrupt the insect’s ability to sense its environment. Flying into the beams, it “experiences a sudden or intense heat wave or light wave that disables it,” Marka explained, which stops it from reaching a human in the first place.

Another major problem is in designing antimalarial drugs that evade resistant strains. Pradipsinh Rathod, a chemistry professor at the University of Washington, looked at elements of the malaria genome that contribute to “hypermutagenesis,” a situation in which an the organism’s DNA mutates at rates so rapid that it dramatically increases the development drug resistance. In a second approach, his team looked at potential compounds that could disrupt the rapid mutation itself, which would provide a way for potential vaccines to remain effective.

Some research indicates that climate change may increase the likelihood of malaria transmission in various parts of the world by making those areas more hospitable to the mosquitoes that carry the parasites. Some of that research is plotted on our Human Toll of Climate Change map.

(Full disclosure: The Gates Foundation has funded grants for education policy work at CAP, but not Science Progress.)

Image: Flicker user bogdog Dan

Tags: infectious disease, public health

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