Malaria Drug Resistance and Disease Virulence

Wellems, Thomas E.

Abstract

Our research project focuses on how malaria parasites become resistant to major antimalarial drugs and why strains of the most deadly malaria parasite (Plasmodium falciparum) show different infectivities to cells of humans and certain other primates. In each of these areas we seek research advances that can improve the knowledge of disease processes in malaria and thereby support the development or testing of new antimalarial chemotherapies, diagnostic tools, and vaccines. The research activities in our program are multidisciplinary and include field studies in malarious regions as well as programs of basic laboratory investigation.

Funding Agency

• Agency: National Institute of Health (NIH)
• Institute: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
• Type: Investigator-Initiated Intramural Research Projects (ZIA)
• Project #: 1ZIAAI000483-25
• Application #: 8156841
• Support Year: 25
• Fiscal Year: 2010
• Total Cost: $874,777

Institution

• Name: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Publications

Obaldia 3rd, Nicanor; Meibalan, Elamaran; Sa, Juliana M et al. (2018) Bone Marrow Is a Major Parasite Reservoir in Plasmodium vivax Infection. MBio 9:

Armistead, Jennifer S; Moraes Barros, Roberto R; Gibson, Tyler J et al. (2018) Infection of mosquitoes from in vitro cultivated Plasmodium knowlesi H strain. Int J Parasitol 48:601-610

Deng, Changsheng; Huang, Bo; Wang, Qi et al. (2018) Large-scale Artemisinin-Piperaquine Mass Drug Administration With or Without Primaquine Dramatically Reduces Malaria in a Highly Endemic Region of Africa. Clin Infect Dis :

Lane, Kristin D; Mu, Jianbing; Lu, Jinghua et al. (2018) Selection of Plasmodium falciparum cytochrome B mutants by putative PfNDH2 inhibitors. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 115:6285-6290

Figan, Christine E; Sá, Juliana M; Mu, Jianbing et al. (2018) A set of microsatellite markers to differentiate Plasmodium falciparum progeny of four genetic crosses. Malar J 17:60

Breglio, Kimberly F; Rahman, Rifat S; Sá, Juliana M et al. (2018) Kelch Mutations in Plasmodium falciparum Protein K13 Do Not Modulate Dormancy after Artemisinin Exposure and Sorbitol Selection In Vitro. Antimicrob Agents Chemother 62:

Mu, Jianbing; Andersen, John F; Valenzuela, Jesus G et al. (2017) High-Sensitivity Assays for Plasmodium falciparum Infection by Immuno-Polymerase Chain Reaction Detection of PfIDEh and PfLDH Antigens. J Infect Dis 216:713-722

Moraes Barros, Roberto R; Gibson, Tyler J; Kite, Whitney A et al. (2017) Comparison of two methods for transformation of Plasmodium knowlesi: Direct schizont electroporation and spontaneous plasmid uptake from plasmid-loaded red blood cells. Mol Biochem Parasitol 218:16-22

Kite, Whitney A; Melendez-Muniz, Viviana A; Moraes Barros, Roberto R et al. (2016) Alternative methods for the Plasmodium falciparum artemisinin ring-stage survival assay with increased simplicity and parasite stage-specificity. Malar J 15:94

Miles, Alistair; Iqbal, Zamin; Vauterin, Paul et al. (2016) Indels, structural variation, and recombination drive genomic diversity in Plasmodium falciparum. Genome Res 26:1288-99