Institute: Ifakara Health Institute
Isolation and banking of a P. falciparum field isolate for the Controlled Human Malaria Challenge
Controlled Human Malaria Infection (CHMI) involves intentionally infecting healthy individuals with malaria parasites, monitoring, and treating the resulting infection at a predetermined endpoint. CHMI has been used for the evaluation of new vaccines and drug candidates for the down selection of the best candidates, accelerating the development of new malaria interventions while saving millions of funds.
CHMI may be initiated through the administration of sporozoites by mosquito bite or Plasmodium-infected erythrocytes (iRBC) by direct intravenous injection. In iRBC-initiated CHMI, the number of parasites initiating the infection can be estimated more accurately, making it better at modelling parasite growth and hence evaluating blood-stage malaria vaccines.
There are few P. falciparum iRBCs banks available to support the increasing need for induced blood stage infection studies in LMIC. Furthermore, available parasite strains are made from standard laboratory strains which may not be ideal representatives of the current field strains. This project represents the first stage in preparation for banking a local parasite strain for future blood-stage CHMI studies. Firstly, the project will identify clonal P. falciparum infections from the field and undertake feeding assays to demonstrate clonal infection in mosquitoes. Secondly, we will optimize the existing malaria blood culture platform to provide a sustainable production of infected mosquitoes for future challenge studies and for banking the parasites.
Read more about Dr Olotu here.