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!
Excited to see the joint Seattle MCTC and PATH effort to evaluate a new point-of-care assay for G6PD deficiency published today. This assay will hopefully improve the care of patients with P. vivax malaria. Check out PATH at @PATHtweets and Seattle MCTC here.
The new paper can be found here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/authors?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0257560
Our CHMI study paper is now online at PLoS Pathogens. Check out how blood stage parasites modify the outcome of sporozoite immunization! PfSPZ-CVac efficacy against malaria increases from 0% to 75% when administered in the absence of erythrocyte stage parasitemia: A randomized, placebo-controlled trial with controlled human malaria infection. Thanks to the participants, the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, Sanaria, and the NIH/NIAID VTEU program for collaboration and support!
LINK: https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1009594 Dr. peter hotez Gives Gottfried Schmer Annual lecture and meets with uw scientists & physicians5/13/2021
Thanks to Dr. Peter Hotez (@PeterHotez) for giving a lecture on Neglected Tropical Diseases, COVID-19 vaccines, and the anti-vaccine movement for the 2nd Annual Gottfried Schmer Memorial Lecture as part of Laboratory Medicine Grand Rounds through @UWMedicine. Dr. Hotez also met with students, residents, fellows, and faculty to discuss training, communication, and diplomacy issues facing scientists today. Lots of great advice for combatting misinformation that imperils the critical benefits of vaccination against COVID-19 and other important infectious diseases!
We are seeking to hire a new Research Scientist 1 to join on diagnostic team in the Malaria Molecular Diagnostic Laboratory. Please send any interested candidates our direction. The job is advertised on UWHires (LINK).
In an effort to expand our studies of malaria parasite throughout their complex lifecycle, Dr. Rebekah Reynolds and our Seattle Children's Research Institute colleagues initiated our first mosquito-stage malaria procedures today in our purpose-built insectary. Congrats to Bekah and the team for bringing our program up to this momentous occasion. Dr. Murphy gave a seminar for the Center for Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases series on 12/4/2020 on the three leading COVID-19 vaccines currently undergoing Phase 3 trials and/or regulatory review. The Zoom recording is posted below for anyone who cannot access the UW-restricted link provided by CERID. COVID-19 vaccines are an incredible achievement of 2020. While they can't come soon enough, in the meantime, keep up the social distancing & mask wearing! [Seminar starts ~2 min into the recording; runtime ~1 hour] [Top photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash] |
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April 2024
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