Latest Plasmodium Stories

Resistance has cut the useful life of nearly every malaria therapy tried so far Malaria brings misery and death to millions in the developing world each year, and fighting it keeps medical researchers up at night because the mosquito-borne parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which causes the deadliest form of the disease, has developed resistance to every drug thrown at it. Resistance has cut short the useful life of nearly every therapy tried so far, experts say. But now molecular...

New research, presented this morning at the 54th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), has identified important associations between Plasmodium falciparum  (Pf) malaria and endemic Burkitt Lymphoma (eBL) that may help researchers identify young children who are more susceptible to eBL. Unlike previous studies in which malaria infection alone was considered the important factor, this study approached the evolving complexity and heterogeneity of the humoral immune...

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Hebrew University researchers discover how the deadly malaria parasite evades the immune system and make progress toward developing a cure More than a million people die each year of malaria caused by different strains of the Plasmodium parasite transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito. The medical world has yet to find an effective vaccine against the deadly parasite, which mainly affects pregnant women and children under the age of five. By figuring out...

Speaking at ASTMH Annual Meeting, researchers say breakthrough could make it much easier to evaluate new drugs and vaccines while also becoming a vaccine itself In a breakthrough that could accelerate malaria vaccine and drug development, scientists announced today that, for the first time ever, human volunteers were infected with malaria via a simple injection of cryopreserved sterile parasites that were harvested from the salivary glands of infected mosquitoes in compliance with...

Researchers have identified a new means to eradicate malaria infections by rapidly killing the blood-borne Plasmodium parasites that cause the disease. Malaria causes up to 3 million deaths each year, predominantly afflicting vulnerable people such as children under five and pregnant women, in tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Treatments are available for this disease, but the Plasmodium parasite is fast becoming resistant to the most common drugs, and health authorities...

In the news release, Pfenex Inc. Awards Althea Technologies a Contract for cGMP Manufacturing of Circumsporozoite Protein from Plasmodium falciparum, a Key Malaria Antigen, issued 24-Oct-2012 by Pfenex Inc. over PR Newswire, we are advised by the company that in the third paragraph, the last sentence should have been a quote attributed to Dr. Annie Mo. This quote is now the fourth paragraph. The complete, corrected release follows: Pfenex Inc. Awards Althea Technologies a Contract for cGMP...

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Pfenex Inc. today announced that it has awarded Althea Technologies a contract for the current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) manufacturing of circumsporozoite protein (CSP) from Plasmodium falciparum, an important and proven component of an effective malaria vaccine. Althea Technologies will implement the cGMP-ready Pf?nex Expression Technology(TM)-based production process that was developed at Pfenex over the past several months....

Researchers Identify How Mosquito Immune System Attacks Specific Infections Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have determined a new mechanism by which the mosquitoes’ immune system can respond with specificity to infections with various pathogens, including the parasite that causes malaria in humans, using one single gene. Unlike humans and other animals, insects do not make antibodies to target specific infections. According to the Johns Hopkins...

ROCKVILLE, Md., Sept. 25, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Protein Potential, LLC was awarded three Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a malaria vaccine that protects against Plasmodium falciparum, the malaria parasite responsible for more than 95% of malaria associated deaths worldwide. The vaccine will target three different stages of the parasite life cycle, thereby preventing infection, disease, and...

Their finding challenges the widely-accepted theory that Plasmodium falciparum, which causes the most lethal form of malaria, is the only malaria parasite capable of driving genome evolution in humans. The study was published today in the journal PLOS Medicine. Professor Ivo Mueller from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and Barcelona Centre for International Health Research (CRESIB) led the study, with colleagues from the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research, Centre of Global...