Dr. Melanie Shears was interviewed for a virtual career day for Dingman-Delaware Middle School in eastern Pennsylvania. Thanks to teacher Rachel Goldstein for interviewing, editing, and sharing with the next generation of prospective scientists! Grateful to our collaborator Dr. Jetsumon Prachumsri and her team in Thailand who sent us these very precious Anopheles dirus mosquitoes for our malaria work. 7,450 miles, quite a lot of paperwork and phone calls while in transit, and a lot of extra efforts on both sides of the Pacific to bring these special mosquitoes to our secure insectary. Drs. Shears and Reynolds are looking forward to seeing what they can teach us about our malaria model systems! Thanks to Alexis and Tyler also for joining the effort on delivery day!
The GSK RTS,S vaccine was formally approved by the WHO this week, thereby adding a malaria vaccine to the malaria toolkit for the first time ever. This is a major achievement for the malaria research community and could help protect those living at risk of this devastating parasite. The rollout of RTS,S is expected to help reduce malaria morbidity and mortality. At the same time, efforts to develop even more effective malaria vaccines are underway in our laboratory and others throughout the world. Dr. Murphy was asked to comment on WHO's announcement by numerous news agencies this week including BBC World News, National Geographic, NPR, and local Seattle TV stations and our lab team got to show off some of our facilities and malaria research tools to the press (see Dr. Reynolds below in the insectary). It's a great week for malaria research and exciting to see this first generation RTS,S malaria vaccine reach this giant approval step!
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Lab PostUpdates about lab activities, papers and other insights! Archives
April 2024
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