Malaria Nexus

Dr. Dondorp is the Deputy Director at the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Research Unit at the University of Mahidol in Bangkok, Thailand and Professor in Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford. Dr. Dondorp and colleagues published the article "Artesunate versus quinine in the treatment of severe falciparum malaria in African children (AQUAMAT): an open-label, randomised trial", in The Lancet at the end of 2010. In this interview, Dr. Dondorp discusses the clinical trials he performed on the efficacy of artesunate versus quinine in the treatment of African and Asian children with acute malaria, the results he obtained and their implications.

In the latest interview for Malaria Nexus, Andrew Richford speaks to Professor Kevin Kain, Director of the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health at the University of Toronto. In this interview, Prof. Kain discusses his work on identifying blood biomarkers that would help identifying malaria-infected pregnant women at risk of poor birth outcomes.

In this interview Andrew Richford talks with Matthew Hann, the Communications Manager for Riders for Health, an international non-governmental organization born out of the world of motorcycle racing. Matthew discusses about the foundation of the organization, and how it has developed from idea to its current successful incarnation.

In this interview Andrew Richford talks with Professor Raymond St Leger. Prof. St Leger discusses the work described in his article published in Science in February 2011, and elaborates on how the development of pathogenic fungi can lead to future control of malaria in the field.

In this interview Andrew Richford talks with Prof. Crisanti. He talks about the work in his laboratory towards the genetic transformation of the mosquito vectors of malaria, and how he sees this area of research continuing to develop in the future.

In this interview Andrew Richford talks with Dr Jake Baum from the WEHI Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. Jake talks about the work of his lab looking especially at Plasmodium merozoite erythrocyte invasion.

In this interview Sir Feachem expands on the discussions within his article, and talks of his own views of the future time-line of malaria elimination.

Andy Richford talks with Tue Nguyen, Vice President, Research Pre-Clinical Development / Leader at the Institute for One World Health and Director of their Malaria Program. Tue describes the rationale behind this project, and elaborates on the collaborative research approach employed with many different organizations that will ultimately lead to its success.

Rob Mather, founder of the Against Malaria Foundation, describes the work and aims of the Foundation, his hopes for the future solutions to control malaria, in particular with the greater distribution of bednets, and the way World Malaria Day can help raise awareness and therefore ultimately aid in the fight against malaria.

Dr Paul Hunt and his group at Institute for Immunology and Infection Research (IIIR), University of Edinburgh, study the genetics of the development of drug resistance by Plasmodium to artemesinin, and their work has recently resulted in the first description of a mutation shown to confer actual resistance to artemisinin in vivo.