Malaria – a growing threat
Box 4 | Australian research
Malaria research currently being conducted in Australia is extensive and varied. Virtually every university has researchers devoted to some aspect of understanding and combating the disease. A few examples are listed below.
Professor Geoffrey McFadden and his team in the School of Botany, University of Melbourne, have set up the only mosquito culture facility in Australia. In a highly controlled environment, they cultivate the malaria parasite in mosquitoes in order to better understand the life cycle of the parasite, in both mosquitoes and humans, and thus develop ways to counter it. Their work has uncovered a new direction for combating the parasite, based on the discovery that the parasite is actually a type of microscopic plant. The scientists have identified around 500 genes that control plant-like functions within the parasite, and have developed herbicide-type drugs that can target these plant-like pathways.
Also at the University of Melbourne, a research team at the Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute led by Professor Malcolm McConville is working towards a better understanding of how microbial pathogens such as the malaria parasite survive in their hosts, to help develop new treatments and vaccines.
A number of teams at the Australian National University Research School of Biology are investigating ways to hinder the growth and replication of the parasite by manipulating its biochemical environment. One of the laboratories is also exploring drug resistance using transgenic (genetically modified) forms of the parasite.
Professor Simon Foote and Drs Brendan McMorran and Gaetan Burgio from the Menzies Research Institute at the University of Tasmania are examining the different immune responses of the numerous children that contract malaria in its endemic regions and why only a few children actually die from the disease. The team uses mice and cultured human forms of the malaria parasite to study the varied immune responses to the disease. The scientists have also discovered that platelets, the cells that cause blood to clot, could offer a new way to combat malaria. The cells bind infected red blood cells and effectively kill the parasite within these cells. Understanding and exploiting how this works could contribute to a new malaria treatment. The team are also working on developing antimalarial drugs that focus on susceptible molecules in the host, rather than the parasite, which will then overcome the problem of the parasite developing resistance to antimalarial drugs.
Researchers led by Professor Susan Charman of the Centre for Drug Candidate Optimisation at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, were awarded the Medicines for Malaria Vaccine (MMV) Project of the Year in2011. Their work is aimed at developing a vaccine that targets a particular enzyme which the malaria parasite needs for survival. The drug inhibits the enzyme, which then kills the parasite.
The 2011 Eureka Prize for Infectious Diseases Research was won by a team from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, led by Professor Alan Cowman. For over ten years, this team has been working to better understand how the malaria parasite invades a human blood cell and evades the human immune system. Their research identified two proteins essential to the parasite’s invasion of blood cells. Trials in rabbits of a drug that works to block these proteins have had successful results.
Research into malaria and ways to treat it is not restricted to academic organisations – the Australian Defence Force also supports a world-recognised malaria research unit, called the Army Malaria Institute. In the interests of protecting the members of the Australian Defence Forces against malaria, the institute conducts research into developing effective rapid diagnostic tests for the disease, evaluation of antimalarial drugs and investigation into drug resistance, along with vector monitoring (looking at how the disease is transmitted and spreads) and control methods.
Boxes
Box 1. Life cycle of malarial parasite
Box 2. Controlling malaria
Box 3. Antimalaria vaccine
Related site
Australia - Europe Malaria Research Cooperation - OzEMalaR
Page updated January 2012.