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Finding new ways for the P. falciparum malaria parasite to invade red blood cells

Malaria kills almost one million people every year. The symptoms include fever, anemia and sometimes death. P. falciparum is the parasite that is responsible for most of the deaths. It is a major contribution to children?s high morbidity and mortality in countries like Uganda. There is no vaccine and resistance against medications is an increasing problem. The parasites live inside erythrocytes where they multiply, and every 48 hours new mini-parasites, so called merozoites, exit the bursting old erythrocytes and enter new erythrocytes. We want to study the process of invasion into new erythrocytes. If we know exactly which proteins the merozoites bind to, we can use this in creating a vaccine or in forming new drugs. We will use combinations of parasites with defined invasion pathways or merozoite antigen knock-out parasites together with erythrocytes that lack specific antigens on their surface, or antibodies against these antigens. We will combine our own expertise of malaria with our collaborator?s expertise in erythrocyte variants, and we believe that this can create totally new opportunities to find new ways of invasion for the P. falciparum parasites. This knowledge is urgently needed to be able to make a vaccine against malaria.

Project ID

SE-0-SE-29-2014-4286-285-12262

Activity status

2 - Implementation

Aid type

D02 - Other technical assistance

% to Uganda

100.00

Organisations

Funding

Sweden

Extending

The Swedish Research Council

Implementing

Lunds universitet

CRS code	%
Malaria control (12262)	100.0