Latest Plasmodium Stories

By Michael Purdy, Washington University in St. LouisResearchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have learned why changes in a single gene, ROP18, contribute substantially to dangerous forms of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. The answer has likely moved science a step closer to new ways to beat Toxoplasma and many other parasites.In a study published in Cell Host & Microbe, scientists show that the ROP18 protein disables host cell proteins that would otherwise pop...

Although the incidence of malaria has declined in all but a few countries worldwide, according to a World Health Organization report earlier this month, malaria remains a global threat. Nearly 800,000 people succumbed to the mosquito-borne disease in 2009, nearly all of them in the developing world.Physicians do not have reliable treatment for the virus at various stages, largely because no one has been able to document the malaria parasite's journeys in the body.Now researchers at Brown...

In notable back-to-back papers appearing in the prestigioous journal Science in October, teams of researchers, one led by Nora Besansky, a professor of biological sciences and a member of the Eck Institute for Global Health at the University of Notre Dame, provided evidence that Anopheles gambiae, which is one of the major mosquito carriers of the malaria parasite in Sub-Saharan Africa, is evolving into two separate species with different traits.Another significant study appearing in this...

University of Illinois at Chicago researcher Dr. John Quigley will describe a promising new approach to blocking malaria transmission during the American Society of Hematology's annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.Quigley will speak at a press briefing Saturday, Dec. 4, at 8 a.m. at the Orange County Convention Center, 9800 International Drive, Room 208C (West Building). His abstract, "Anopheline Orthologs of the Human Erythroid Heme Exporter, FLVCR, Export Heme: Potential Targets to Inhibit...

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Each year, there are more than 250 million cases of malaria, killing between one and three million people, the majority of whom are young children.  Using mathematical models and maps, researchers have predicted the viability of eliminating malaria from counties that have the deadliest form of the disease.  With these findings, saving countless lives could be as simple as one plus one."People need to know that the money they are spending is having an...

CHICAGO, Nov. 2, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Advanced Life Sciences Holdings, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: ADLS), a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery, development and commercialization of novel drugs in the therapeutic areas of infection, oncology and respiratory diseases, today announced that it has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement ("CRADA") with The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. The purpose of this CRADA is to allow The Walter Reed Army...

The development and first use of a high-density SNP array for the malaria vector mosquito have established 400,000 genetic markers capable of revealing new insights into how the insect adapts to outsmart insecticides and other preventive measures, according to findings published in the current edition of the journal Science. The SNP array's snapshot of the Anopheles gambiae genome can be used by scientists worldwide to advance public health efforts to contain and eliminate the deadly disease,...

Scientists at The University of Nottingham and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge have pin-pointed the 72 molecular switches that control the three key stages in the life cycle of the malaria parasite and have discovered that over a third of these switches can be disrupted in some way.Their research which has been funded by Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council (MRC) is a significant breakthrough in the search for cheap and effective vaccines and drugs to stop the...

The parasite that causes the most deadly strain of malaria in humans appears to have originally crossed the species barrier from gorillas, researchers reported on Wednesday.The scientists analyzed DNA from the droppings of some 3,000 gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos, and found that the strain of malaria parasite most common in humans is virtually identical to one of many strains that infect gorillas.Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and colleagues used the droppings to...

Malaria remains a serious global health problem, killing more than one million people per year. Treatment of the mosquito-borne illness relies on antibiotics, and the emergence of drug-resistant malaria is of growing concern. In a report published online today in Genome Research (www.genome.org), scientists analyzed the genomic features of a Peruvian parasite population, identifying the genetic basis for resistance to a common antibiotic and gaining new insights that could improve the...