Malaria

Aida Sadikh Badiane of the Universite Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar in Senegal will use a metabolomics platform to identify cervicovaginal metabolites and inflammatory mediators associated with high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, which cause the majority of cervical cancer cases, in Senegalese women. Cervical cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in women in sub-Saharan Africa. Metabolic and immune markers could enable more effective diagnoses for these diseases than the current methods used in low-resource settings.

Simon Kariuki of the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Kenya will use an antibody platform to characterize children's immune responses to the new malaria vaccine to determine the impact of any accompanying infections. The WHO recently approved a new malaria vaccine that will mainly be deployed in sub-Saharan Africa. During its development, HIV-infected children were found to mount weaker immune responses. Helminth infections, which are prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, are also suspected to negatively impact vaccine efficacy.

Daudi Jjingo of the Infectious Diseases Institute in Uganda will leverage generative AI to develop an interactive conversation-based platform to communicate the national guidelines for pandemic preparedness in a native African language to health workers to improve pandemic management. The national guidelines, currently available as a lengthy PDF, will be translated into a local Bantu language, Luganda, to improve accessibility to non-English speaking users, and converted into a data format for Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT-4.

Lemu Golassa of Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia and Laurent Dembele of University of Science, Techniques and Technology of Bamako in Mali will analyze the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium vivax to identify molecules that enable it to transform into a dormant hypnozoite form in the liver, which is thought to be the key obstacle to malaria elimination. In many regions, P.

Fyodor has commercialized the Urine Malaria Test (UMT) - the first and only non-blood dipstick test that tells within 25 minutes if a fever is malaria, and works just like a pregnancy test. With the UMT, we are making it possible for anyone with a fever to be promptly tested, particularly in settings where access to formal healthcare facilities may be limited. In this project, we aim to roll out the UMT at scale and expand access to malaria testing in emerging markets.

Fredros Okumu of the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania will develop technology to evaluate mosquito control interventions using a combination of artificial intelligence, infrared spectroscopy, and entomology. Malaria caused over 400,000 deaths in 2017, the majority in the developing world, and an effective way to control the disease is to target the mosquitoes that transmit it. Current tools cannot precisely measure mosquito age or life-expectancy, and are therefore unable to predict the impact of mosquito control interventions.

Pietro Alano of the Instituto Superiore de Sanità in Italy will develop a biochip that mimics the midgut of the Anopheles mosquito and can be used to more easily and quickly test candidate anti-malarial compounds for blocking transmission of the causative Plasmodium parasite. Malaria is a potentially fatal infection caused by parasites transmitted between humans through the bites of infected mosquitoes. When a mosquito bites an infected person, immature Plasmodium gametocytes enter the mosquito and transform into an invasive ookinete stage in its midgut.

Elena Levashina of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Germany and Kelly Lee of the University of Washington in the U.S. will use cryoelectron tomography to image the three-dimensional ultrastructure of a protein on the surface of the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum to help design better vaccines. Malaria kills half a million people annually, but there are still no highly effective vaccines available. One of the parasite's coat proteins, CSP, is a prime target for vaccine development.

Eric Ochomo of the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) in Kenya and Luc Djogbenou of the University of Abomey (UAC) in Benin will develop a curriculum to teach African scientists how to use genetic approaches to combat insecticide resistance in the fight against malaria. Malaria is a disease that kills almost 500,000 people annually, most in sub-Saharan Africa. People become infected when bitten by mosquitoes that transmit the disease-causing parasites. Insecticide treatment of bed nets and indoor areas are effective methods of disease control, but mosquitoes are becoming resistant.

Gautam V. Soni from Raman Research Institute in India will develop a Resistive Pulse Technique (RPT) for malaria detection based on the established fact that the Plasmodium falciparum-infected red blood cells (RBCs) are about 3 to 10 times stiffer than the normal RBCs, depending on the stage of parasite growth. Therefore, flow velocities of stiffer (infected) and softer (normal) RBCs can be easily distinguished in a simple fluidic channel using RPT.