 |
|
Identifying and disrupting key elements of malaria's 'sticky sack' adhesion strategy
July 11, 2008Malaria is one of the most devastating diseases afflicting humanity. It infects and debilitates about 600 million people and kills up to three million people every year, mainly in the wet tropical regions of the world. Children and pregnant women are at particularly high risk.
The malaria parasite is injected into humans by an infected mosquito. The parasites then infect healthy red blood cells, transforming them into sticky sacks containing up to thirty-two new daughter parasites. The hijacked red blood cells stick to blood vessel walls, thereby avoiding being flushed through the spleen and being destroyed there by the body's immune system.
WEHI scientists have revealed key elements in the parasite's "sticky sack" adhesion strategy. They have identified eight new proteins that transport the parasite's major adhesion factor, PfEMP1, to the surface of infected red cells, where it promotes the formation of sticky knobs. They have also shown that removal of just one of these proteins disrupts the ability of the parasite bag to stick to blood vessel walls.
This discovery has greatly enhanced our understanding of how the parasite commandeers the red blood cell for its own survival and avoids our immune defences. It also suggests that a drug that inactivates an essential adhesion protein would be an effective anti-malarial.
All currently available malaria drugs attempt to disrupt the metabolism or biological function of the parasite. Unfortunately, malaria parasites are evolving resistance to such drugs, suggesting that quite a different strategy may be required - hence the importance of targeting the "stickiness factors." The inability of the parasite to prevent its transport to the human spleen would lead to the parasite's natural destruction.
Research Australia
This discovery has greatly enhanced our understanding of how the parasite commandeers the red blood cell for its own survival and avoids our immune defences. It also suggests that a drug that inactivates an essential adhesion protein would be an effective anti-malarial.
All currently available malaria drugs attempt to disrupt the metabolism or biological function of the parasite. Unfortunately, malaria parasites are evolving resistance to such drugs, suggesting that quite a different strategy may be required - hence the importance of targeting the "stickiness factors." The inability of the parasite to prevent its transport to the human spleen would lead to the parasite's natural destruction.
Research Australia
Malaria Current Events and Malaria News RSSScientists decode genome of parasite that causes relapsing malaria
Scientists have deciphered the complete genetic sequence of the parasite Plasmodium vivax, the leading cause of relapsing malaria, and compared it with the genomes of other species of malaria parasites.
Common insecticide can decimate tadpole populations
The latest findings of a University of Pittsburgh-based project to determine the environmental impact of routine pesticide use suggests that malathion--the most popular insecticide in the United States--can decimate tadpole populations by altering their food chain, according to research published in the Oct. 1 edition of Ecological Applications.
Nanotech and synbio: Americans don't know what's coming
A groundbreaking poll finds that almost half of U.S. adults have heard nothing about nanotechnology, and nearly nine in 10 Americans say they have heard just a little or nothing at all about the emerging field of synthetic biology, according to a new report released by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) and Peter D. Hart Research.
New way to make malaria medicine also first step in finding new antibiotics
University of Illinois microbiology professor William Metcalf and his collaborators have developed a way to mass-produce an antimalarial compound, potentially making the treatment of malaria less expensive.
New UNC laboratory to help track and control tropical diseases
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health has established a new Gillings Innovation Lab to track and map tropical infectious diseases such as malaria, using state-of-the-art molecular and demographic methods.
Hidden infections crucial to understanding, controlling disease outbreaks
Scientists and news organizations typically focus on the number of dead and gravely ill during epidemics, but research at the University of Michigan suggests that less dramatic, mild infections lurking in large numbers of people are the key to understanding cycles of at least one potentially fatal infectious disease: cholera.
New insights could lead to a better pneumococcal vaccine
Discovery of a new, previously unknown mechanism of immunity suggests that there may be a better way to protect vulnerable children and adults against Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcal) infection, say researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).
Purifying parasites with light
Researchers have developed a clever method to purify parasitic organisms from their host cells, which will allow for more detailed proteomic studies and a deeper insight into the biology of organisms that cause millions of cases of disease each year.
'Dodgy dossier' partly to blame for failure of war against malaria in the tropics
The war against malaria in tropical countries was fought and lost in the 20th Century on the basis of faulty intelligence, a 'dodgy dossier' which argued that the same methods used to tackle the disease in temperate countries would also work in the tropics.
Best way to treat malaria: Avoid using same drug for everyone, scientists say
A team of scientists employing a sophisticated computer model pioneered at Princeton University and Resources for the Future has found that many governments worldwide are recommending the wrong kind of malaria treatment.
More Malaria Current Events and Malaria News Articles
 | The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria (Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease) by Randall M. Packard Malaria sickens hundreds of millions of people -- and kills one to three million -- each year. Despite massive efforts to eradicate the disease, it remains a major public health problem in poorer tropical regions. But malaria has not always been concentrated in tropical areas. How did other regions control malaria and why does the disease still flourish in some parts of the globe?From Russia to... |
 | The Malaria Capers : More Tales of Parasites and People, Research and Reality by Robert S. Desowitz |
 | Malaria Dreams: An African Adventure by Stuart Stevens |
 | Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States by Margaret Humphreys In Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States, Margaret Humphreys presents the first book-length account of the parasitic, insect-borne disease that has infected millions and influenced settlement patterns, economic development, and the quality of life at every level of American society, especially in the south.Humphreys approaches malaria from three perspectives: the... |
 | The Conquest of Malaria: Italy, 1900-1962 by Frank Snowden At the outset of the twentieth century, malaria was Italy’s major public health problem. It was the cause of low productivity, poverty, and economic backwardness, while it also stunted literacy, limited political participation, and undermined the army. In this book Frank Snowden recounts how Italy became the world center for the development of malariology as a medical discipline and launched... |
| Mosquitoes, malaria, and man: A history of the hostilities since 1880 by Gordon A Harrison | |
 | Kawthoolei Dreams, Malaria Nights Burma's Civil War by Martin MacDonald |
 | Malaria Control on Impounded Water by United States Public Health Service, Tennessee Valley Authority |
 | Molecular Approaches to Malaria Molecular Approaches to Malaria provides an overview of the rapid and significant developments that have occurred in malaria research, including the 2002 genome sequencing of Plasmodium falciparum and its mosquito vector, Anopheles gambiae. An important resource for molecular biologists, biochemists, cell biologists, chemists, pathologists, parasitologists, entomologists, and... |
 | The Malaria Capers by Robert S. Desowitz |
| © 2008 BrightSurf.com |