Researchers at Emory University www.emory.edu, University of Georgia www.uga.edu, and Georgia Tech www.gatech.edu along with national and international collaborators are now going to study the mechanisms behind resilience following malaria infections.
Malaria which is transmitted through mosquito bites, is the most widespread human parasitic disease and is endemic in about 100 countries. Malaria causes fever, pain, and other acute responses, and in some cases may become deadly within days of the onset of symptoms.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) www.darpa.mil and the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) www.arl.army.mil are supporting the malaria research study at the universities through a $6.4 million contract. The research study is termed the “Host Acute Models of Malaria to Study Experimental Resilience or referred to as the HAMMER project.
The research team will use a systems biology approach to do the study and will generate large datasets on the characteristic of the P.knowlesi infection in two types of non-human primates and in humans.
They will then develop and apply mathematical models to compare and contrast the different scenarios of infections in order to identify particular host features associated with resilience. This may yield insights that could lead to novel interventions for malaria, including new drugs.
The researchers will use surgically implanted telemetry devices to gather continuous real-time physiological data from two types of monkeys, before and during infections, and from human infections.
The researcher’s ultimate goal is to test candidate therapeutic interventions in highly susceptible hosts to reduce disease severity and death in the absence of effective antimalarial chemotherapy or in conjunction with antimalarial chemotherapy.