Malaria Research and Control

Malaria is an infectious disease caused by *Plasmodium* parasites, most lethally *P. falciparum*, transmitted to humans through the bites of *Anopheles* mosquitoes and responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, the majority of them young children in sub-Saharan Africa. Researchers work across molecular biology, epidemiology, and public health to understand how the parasite evades the immune system, how mosquito populations spread and sustain transmission, and how environmental shifts alter the geographic reach of the disease. A pressing concern is the spread of resistance — both artemisinin resistance in the parasite and insecticide resistance in mosquito vectors — which threatens to erode the two main tools currently keeping transmission in check. Alongside this, scientists are advancing genome-based approaches to track parasite evolution, developing new classes of antimalarial drugs, and working to produce vaccines that could offer durable protection at the population level.

Works

179,232

Total citations

2,681,931

Keywords

Plasmodium falciparumArtemisinin ResistanceMalaria ParasiteMosquito VectorsAntimalarial DrugGenome Sequence