Today marks World Malaria Day 2019. After years of unprecedented progress against this terrible disease, reductions in the world’s malaria burden have stalled. WHO has launched a new strategy to directly target the disease in high burden malaria countries called “High Burden to High Impact”. This approach will bring together existing tools to be used in new and better ways, advocacy, political action, and focus on highly endemic countries to reduce the pathogen’s footprint. We are working to help improve diagnostics and vaccines for these efforts. For instance, our team helped to evaluate a highly sensitive Rapid Diagnostic Test or RDT that may detect malaria parasite infections undetectable by conventional tests. Our University of Washington contribution to this work was to perform our highly sensitive Plasmodium 18S rRNA Reverse Transcription PCR (RT-PCR) in order to detect infections far below the limit of detection of even the highly sensitive RDT. We also used this RT-PCR to support Controlled Human Malaria Infection or CHMI studies. Late last year, the FDA qualified the Plasmodium 18S rRNA/rDNA as a Biomarker for vaccine and drug development in CHMI studies. The peer-reviewed report on this effort is now published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. We look forward to working with all of our partners in the coming year and are eager and hopeful that the world’s new strategies to combat malaria can turn the tide against this deadly disease.
|
Lab PostUpdates about lab activities, papers and other insights! Archives
April 2024
Categories |