Accomplishments during the year: 1. The immune response to AMA1 combined with RON2 has been studied and the six AMA1 sequences identified. Developed USAID grant with Sanjay Singh and Steve Reed to fund the vaccine. 2. Develop an adjunctive therapy for children with cerebral malaria. This study has included the understanding of CD8 positive T cells in children who died of cerebral malaria. We are also working with a company in making DON, the adjunctive therapy. 3. We are attempting to understand the translocon structure in P. falciparum. The first study is published in mBio. We continue to work on the details of how RON3 functions in the translocon formation by immunoprecipitation and creation of a RON3 with a FLAG tag for the purification of RON3. We have performed immuneprecipitation from wild type parasites and KO parasites with antibodies to the PETEX components and to RON3. 4. To develop the in vitro culture system for P. vivax, we are trying to grow the parasites in low oxygen conditions in a glove box so they never are exposed to the oxidative stress of 21% oxygen. We are looking at the oxidative status of reticulocytes and erythrocytes. We are testing different anti-oxidants from Susan Doctoral. We are trying to culture the immortal cell line as the continuous source of reticulocytes and will be cultured in a humidified hypoxia chamber. 5. We continue the study of the mechanism of red cell invasion by P. falciparum and P. vivax. The focus in P. vivax is on invasion of P. vivax into Duffy negative red cells in study in Ethiopia, Cameroon and Mali. 6. We are studying the parasite encoded red cell ligands by studying the invasion of Aotus and Saimiri P. vivax infections. We studied the RNAseq of P. vivax parasites growing in Saimiri and Aotus monkeys to identify the differences in invasion ligands. We completed the study and published the results in PNAS.
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