Malaria & Parasitology

Our work traverses broad range of topics in parasitology. We have studied schistosomiasis, babesosis as well as other parasites. Our main focus is multifaceted work studying malaria — a disease that still kills every year hundreds of thousands of individuals, particularly children in Africa. The work traverses basic disease biology including the human genetics of infection to public health interventions.. We are currently vested in multiple efforts to understand emerging diagnostic escape to rapid diagnostic tests and drug resistance to frontline antimalarials in Africa.

— Our Major Projects include —

Supporting Molecular Surviellence at a country-wide level in the Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as well as other countries

Building capacity for genomic surveillance work is vital to informing malaria control efforts. While we aim to build capacity with all of our grants, we are directly involved in supporting building national capacity thrugh funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation both in the Tanzania (Molecular Surviellance Malaria in Tanzania led by Dr. Deus Ishengoma) and as part of IDEEL supporting INRB in DRC (PaluSeq). We also are supporting the work of Gates Calestous fellows perfomring surviellence in Kenya (Dr. Isabella Oyier, KEMRI Kilifi) and Ghana (Dr. Anita Ghansah, Noguchi U of Ghana). In total we are supporting targeted sequencing of the parasite from tens of thousands of infections annually within sub-Saharan Africa. (Funding BMGF)

Understanding how the RTS,S falciparum malaria vaccine is affected by environmental, host and pathogen factors.

The first approved malaria vaccine was only partially effective. We are studying the main vaccine trial to understand how environmental factors such as exposure and household risks affected protection. Separate aims also examine variation in the protien target of the vaccine in infecting parasites as well as human genetic variation that may affect the vaccine. This work is a collaboration with 3 of the 11 trial sites including CERMEL (Gabon), KHRC (Ghana) and Project Malawi (Malawi). Co-PI Mike Emch is focused on environmental factors, Anita Ghansah (Noguchi) on the parasite, and our lab on the human genetics. Eventually we will bring it all back together for an overarching analysis. (Funding NIH R01 — PI Bailey)

Tracking drug resistance spread across the Democratic Republic of Congo

We are leveraging high-throughput sequencing with molecular inversion probes to track population structure and drug resistance mutations to antimalarials both in country-wide surveys as well as more focused longitudinal cohorts to understand how drug resistance spreads and the factors ​ ​The goal is to better​ ​understand​ ​the​ ​evolution​ ​and​ ​spread​ ​of​ ​drug​ ​resistance​ ​ ​and​ ​determine​ ​barriers​ ​and corridors​ ​of​ ​gene​ ​flow​ ​that​ ​can​ ​be​ ​targeted​ ​in​ ​public​ ​health​ ​interventions. (Funding NIH R01 — PI Bailey)

Artemisinin Resistance in Africa: its emergence and evolution in Rwanda

Parasite resistance to artemisinin with a validated mutation in the pfkelch13 (k13) gene has been found in Rwanda. Given that all front line antimalarial combination therapies for treating Plasmodium falciparum in Africa rely on artemisinin, this portends serious setbacks for the large-scale efforts aiming to control and eliminate this disease. We will use large-scale genomics, experimental systems, and mathematical modeling to map and study the spread of resistance overtime, and, together, these studies will improve our understanding of the biology and evolution of this resistance in Africa, help us to predict its spread and allow development of interventions (Funding NIH R01 — PI Bailey)