Malaria

Babak Javid of Tsinghua University in China, working with Paul MacAry of the National University of Singapore in Singapore, will study human monoclonal antibodies that protect individuals from infection by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and could be used to develop a tuberculosis vaccine. Tuberculosis is the world's most deadly infectious disease, and the causative bacteria are present in latent form in up to a quarter of the global population.

Paul MacAry of the National University of Singapore in Singapore, working with Babak Javid of Tsinghua University in China, will study human monoclonal antibodies that protect individuals from infection by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and could be used to develop a tuberculosis vaccine. Tuberculosis is the world's most deadly infectious disease and the causative bacteria are present in latent form in up to a quarter of the global population.

We will manipulate the evolutionary trajectories to reverse the course of drug-resistant evolution of the parasites making them drug sensitive again. This revolutionary way of fighting drug resistance will pave way to malaria eradication by drugs.

James Platts-Mills of the University of Virginia in the U.S. will quantify the effect of factors, including antibiotic use and hospitalization, in infants on the subsequent incidence and spread of drug-resistant pathogens in developing countries. This will help design more effective strategies for containing it. They will use samples and data taken from birth up to one year of age from a previous longitudinal study, the MAL-ED study, which was performed in eight developing countries. Monthly samples from fifty infants will be analyzed for the emergence of drug-resistant E. coli.

David Wright of Vanderbilt University in the U.S. will develop a diagnostic that combines sample concentration and multiplex detection into one rapid test that can detect the low levels of the malaria parasite in asymptomatic patients. They will develop a vertical flow component to accommodate larger sample volumes, which will increase the sensitivity of the adjacent lateral flow assay. They will mark the position of a fold on the diagnostic for delivering the isolated biomarkers on one side to the lateral flow assay on the other, which will then present the results using colored lines.

Tyler Radford of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team in the U.S. will develop an analytical tool to derive information relevant for malaria elimination efforts from OpenStreetMap, which is the largest crowd-sourced map of the world. OpenStreetMap contains information uploaded by volunteers and professionals on the location of features such as roads and health facilities. They will build plugins that enable users to analyze the distribution of malaria intervention strategies such as bed nets and health clinics, and identify regions that require more detailed mapping.

Praveen Ravi of Athena Infonomics India Private Ltd. in India will develop a real-time surveillance model and simple recommendation engine for local governments in India to better monitor and react to the spread of malaria. They will develop low-cost methods to incorporate existing and diverse data from multiple sources related to the insect vectors and infections, such as the use of vector elimination products and medical reports of malaria cases, and demographic data such as population density.

Yang Cheng of Jiangnan University in China will develop a smartphone application to track Chinese individuals who move to work in other countries with high levels of malaria. When these migrant workers return home, there is a risk that they also import malaria, which can then be locally spread via mosquitoes and cause an outbreak. They will develop the application to measure body temperature and track location, and combine it with an existing malaria response system that is used to identify, track and treat malaria in the Jiangsu province, to improve the accuracy and speed of response.

Patrick Degnan with Rachel Whitaker and Rebecca Stumpf of the University of Illinois in the U.S. will harness the CRISPR bacterial immune system to develop a new technology called in vitro CRISPR-capture. They will use this tool to track the abundance and transmission of antimicrobial resistance elements among connected natural and human ecosystems in East Africa.

Ricky Chiu of Phase Diagnostics Inc. in the U.S. will develop a new paper-based oral diagnostic device with high accuracy that can rapidly concentrate and detect malaria biomarkers without needing any power, equipment or personnel training. This will overcome the risks and difficulties involved with finger-prick blood collection, and the lack of sensitivity of current rapid diagnostic tests. It will enable the detection of malaria cases in regions with low densities of infection, and ultimately help eliminate malaria from these regions.