- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you want to learn about malaria and the exciting new research underway, be sure to set aside Friday, April 24.
It's the fourth annual Bay Area World Malaria Day Symposium, co-hosted by the University of California, Davis, and Zagaya, a non-profit organization that envisions a malaria-free world.
The event, open to the public, will take place from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the Clark Kerr campus, University of California, Berkeley. Keynote speaker is Patrick Duffy, chief of the National Institutes of Health's Laboratory of Malaria Immunology and Vaccinology. Duffy is an internationally recognized expert in human malaria pathogenesis, malaria in pregnancy, and malaria vaccine development. He has published more than 100 papers on malaria over his nearly 25-year career.
Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites, which are transmitted through the bites of infected mosquitoes. The statistics continue to be alarming. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated last December 2014 that about 198 million cases of malaria occurred in 2013. Every minute a child in Africa dies from malaria. WHO estimated that malaria deaths in 2013 totaled 584,000 deaths worldwide. However, malaria mortality rates among children in Africa has dropped an estimated 58 percent since 2000, thanks to increased malaria prevention and control measures.
In addition, members of the Luckhart lab, including Jose Pietri, Lizzy Glennon, Lattha Souvannaseng, and Nazzy Pakpour, will present their research at the meeting.
"The event will provide significant opportunities for networking for our trainees and for spending a day thinking about we can make a difference to eliminating one the greatest global health crises of our time," Luckhart said.
James R. Carey, distinguished professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and Cecilia Giulivi, professor, Department of Molecular Biosciences, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, "will be presenting on innovative applications of their expertise to malaria research," Luckhart announced.
Other UC Davis campus faculty attending the meeting will include Renee Tsolis of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, UC Davis School of Medicine, and her lab; and Koen Van Rompay, director of the Diagnostics Laboratory, California National Primate Research Center, UC Davis.
The daylong event will conclude with a gala reception hosted by the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), a global public health non-profit founded in 1977 with significant interests in malaria and more than 1200 employees in 30 offices across the world.
Zagaya, directed by Kay Monroe, is a Bay Area-non profit that envisions a malaria-free world created through education, innovative vector control, effective vaccines, better water management and safer pesticides, and access to the highest quality anti-malarials available.
The symposium is open to the public, and registration is underway. See Bay Area World Malaria Day Symposium. General admission is $50, and student admission (with identification) is $25. Registration includes breakfast and lunch. In addition, attendees are invited to donate funds for bednets in Africa. The donations will go to Nothing But Nets, one of the World Malaria Day partners.
Map: http://p2sl.berkeley.edu/maps/DirectionsToCKC.pdf
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
"Every 45 seconds a child in Africa dies from malaria, a disease spread by a single mosquito bite. There are more than 200 million cases of malaria each year, and nearly 1 million of those infected die from the disease — most of them children under the age of five."
That's on the Nothing But Nets website and there's something we can all do to help. We can donate $10 for a life-saving bed net to protect families in Africa from getting bit by a mosquito.
There's something else we can do: attend the third annual Bay Area World Malaria Day Symposium, set for 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., Friday, April 25 on the Clark Kerr campus, UC Berkeley.
It promises to be a day of innovation, knowledge-sharing and collaboration, announced Kay Monroe of Zagaya, the event host. The schedule of events will be presented the day of the symposium.
Lanzaro's Soundbite presentation,"Malaria in the Americas: A New Research Initiative for the UC Davis Vector Genetics Lab," will key in on the challenges of malaria control in Brazil. Lee's Soundbite presentation will be on a new diagnostic tool for malaria mosquito research. Luckhart is scheduled for both a Soundbite and poster.
Two of the UC Davis presenters, Laura Norris and Bradley Main, are National Institutes of Health T32 postdoctoral fellows. They will cover the topic of malaria vector evolution in the face of insecticide pressure from bed net campaign.
The list of the other UC Davis presenters, as announced by Monroe:
Nazzy Pakpour, Soundbite; and Elizabeth Glennon, Kristen Lokken, Jason Maloney, Jose Pietri, Rashaun Potts and Lattha Souvannaseng, Bo Wang, poster.
Keynote speakers are:
- Tim Wells, chief scientific officer, Medicines for Malaria Venture, Geneva, Switzerland, who will share the latest efforts to develop new drugs aimed at wiping out malaria.
Title: The Pipeline of Medicines to Support Malaria Control and Elimination
View abstract - Joseph DeRisi, professor and vice chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, UC San Francisco, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, who will talk about work in his lab.
Title: "A View from the Trenches – Anti-malarial Drug Development"
View abstract - Regina Rabinovich, ExxonMobil Malaria Scholar in Residence at the Harvard School of Public Health, who will examine the future of malaria eradication efforts, past the 2015 UN Millennium Development goals.
Title: "Beyond the Millennium Development Goals Horizon – What Will Help Drive Success Post-2015?"
View abstract
Officials at Zagaya (which means "spear") say this is a critical time for malaria research professionals to come together, as it's one year away from the 2015 UN Millennium Development goal of halting and reversing the growth of malaria incidence. The symposium provides the forum for researchers, implementers, advocates and students to "inspire and catalyze change for the greater good."
Registration is open and ongoing until the day of the event. General registration is $50, and students, $25. A portion of the registration fee--$10--will go toward purchasing bed nets via the United Nation's Nothing but Nets program, a global, grassroots campaign to save lives by preventing malaria.
The nets are considered one of the most cost-effective tools to prevent the spread of malaria. How effective? Statistics show that bed nets can reduce malaria transmissions by 90 percent in areas with high coverage rates.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
UC Davis molecular biologist Shirley Luckhart, professor of Medical Microbiology and Immunology (MMI) and a graduate student advisor with the UC Davis Department of Entomology, has just received a 2012 Outstanding Mentor Award from the UC Davis Consortium for Women and Research.
Professor Luckhart is an international authority on malaria, but on campus, she's also known as an outstanding educator and mentor. So it was no surprise--except to her--that her 15-member lab got together and nominated her for the coveted award.
In her letter of support, doctoral candidate Anna Drexler described Luckhart as "an exceptional mentor" who "cares deeply about the people she mentors and has regular meeting times scheduled with each individual in the lab and with the lab as a whole. In her weekly lab meetings, she fosters a collaborative environment where people can practice presentation skills, brainstorm new ideas and gain help troubleshooting research problems. Additionally, I have found her door is always open to myself and other students, regardless of her very busy schedule."
In these tough economic times, when funding is so tight it squeaks, Luckhart manages to find funding. As Drexler pointed out: Luckhart "works very hard to secure funding for students that she takes on and has, to date, been successful in this for every student in her lab. She strongly encourages each of her protégés to present independent research at one major research conference per year and provides funding for these events."
Doctoral candidate Elizabeth Glennon praised "the cohesive and collaborative nature of her lab" and "the quality of training that her students receive."
The Luckhart lab drew national attention when Time magazine featured the lab's role in making a malaria-proof mosquito. Time singled out the malaria-proof mosquito as "the best invention" in the Health and Medicine category of its "50 Best Inventions of 2010."
Frankly, we don't know how Shirley Luckhart can juggle all those balls she's tossed up in the air. Research, education, public service, advisor to multiple graduate student groups--and mentoring. (Read what the scientists in her lab wrote about her.)
In a world of gems that are few and far between, Shirley Luckhart is a rare treasure.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
You don't usually see "honey bees" and "malaria" in the same sentence.
That won't be the case, though, when Joseph DeRisi, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and professor and vice chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco, comes to the UC Davis campus to lecture on Monday, Jan. 9.
His presentation, "A Seminar in Two Acts: Honey Bees and Malaria," is from 10 to 11 a.m. in the main auditorium (Room 2005) of the Genome and Biomedical Sciences Facility.
The seminar, open to all interested persons, is sponsored by the Biological Networks Focus Group of the Genome Center. Host is Oliver Fiehn, professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and the Genome Center.
DeRisi, a molecular biologist and biochemist, was named the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Grant (also known as "the genius award") in 2004. In 2008, DeRisi won the Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment. Among his many accomplishments: he designed and programmed a groundbreaking tool for finding (and fighting) viruses -- the ViroChip, a DNA microarray that test for the presence of all known viruses in one step.
The DeRisi lab drew international attention last year with publications in Public Library of Science journals.
Malaria:
Chemical Rescue of Malaria Parasites Lacking an Apicoplast Defines Organelle Function in Blood-Stage Plasmodium falciparum (published in PLoS Biology, August 2011)
Honey Bees:
Temporal Analysis of the Honey Bee Microbiome Reveals Four Novel Viruses and Seasonal Prevalence of Known Viruses, Nosema, and Crithidia (published in PLoS One, June, 2011)
Among those working on the honey bee research and co-authoring the PLoS One paper was insect virus researcher Michelle Flenniken, a postdoctoral fellow in the Raul Andino lab at UC San Francisco and the recipient of the Häagen-Dazs Postdoctoral Fellowship in Honey Bee Biology at UC Davis.
Among DeRisi's collaborators on malaria research is UC Davis molecular biologist Shirley Luckhart, professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology and an advisor in the Entomology Graduate Program.
DeRisi, who received his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1999 from Stanford University, does amazing work.
He's a genius, to be sure.
Check out these links:
Joseph DeRisi Lab, UC San Francisco
Joe DeRisi: Biochemist (featured in TED ("Technology, Entertainment, Design" is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.)
Conversation with Joe DeRisi (New York Times)
Solving Medical Mysteries (YouTube)
Hunting the Next Killer Virus (YouTube)
Joseph DeRisi: Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Joseph DeRisi in Wikipedia
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
They're probably not, though. They're too busy doing research.
They're the UC Davis scientists who worked on a malaria-proof mosquito that just made Time Magazine’s “50 Best Inventions of 2010.”
It's listed as No. 1 in Time Magazine’s Health and Medicine Category.
Back pedal to July of 2010. The collaborative team of UC Davis and University of Arizona researchers published their work on their malaria-proof mosquito in the journal Public Library of Science Pathogens (PLOS).
The research drew international attention because globally, malaria infects some 250 million people annually and kills more than a million a year, primarily in Africa.
"A malaria-proof mosquito?" Could it be? Yes!
“The transgenic mosquitoes were developed at the University of Arizona and we performed the malaria parasite infection studies here at UC Davis,” said malaria researcher and professor Shirley Luckhart (above) of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology and an advisor in the Entomology Graduate Program.
Among the 11 scientists co-authoring the paper were four UC Davis researchers: Luckhart; professor Edwin Lewis, who has a joint appointment in the Entomology and Nematology departments; Entomology doctoral student Anna Drexler who studies with major professor Luckhart; and postdoctoral scholar Nazzy Pakpour of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology.
“This is the first time anyone has created a transgenic mosquito line that has two important features for malaria transmission control: (1) reduced lifespan, and (2) complete resistance to infection with the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum,” Luckhart said.
“We know that one mosquito phenotype,” Luckhart said, “might not be enough to block transmission – that is, selection could result in parasites that develop more quickly or are more virulent to overcome one or the other phenotype, but the chance that parasites could evolve to evade both would be very small. We’re working on the mechanism of anti-parasite resistance right now and we have some tantalizing results that suggest that the effect on lifespan and immunity are linked through some major metabolic changes in the transgenic mosquitoes.”
As of Jan. 7, their scientific paper, “Activation of Akt Signaling Reduces the Prevalence and Intensity of Malaria Parasite Infection and Lifespan in Anopheles stephensi Mosquitoes, has generated nearly 7000 article views and has drawn extensive news coverage.
In a July 17 news article headlined “Malaria-Proof Mosquito Created,” science writer Eric Bland of ABC News pointed out that scientists had “engineered a genetic ‘on switch' that permanently activates a malaria-destroying response.”
“If these mosquitoes,” Bland wrote, “are successfully introduced into the wild, they could prevent millions of people from becoming infected with life-threatening Plasmodium -- the parasite that causes malaria.”
Time Magazine reporter Jeffrey Kluger described 2010 as "a bad year to be a mosquito. The world's most annoying insect is responsible for 250 million cases of malaria per year — and 1 million deaths. But scientists...have genetically engineered a mosquito that's immune to the Plasmodium parasite, the malaria-causing agent it transmits with its bite. The next step is to make the new mosquito hardier than the ordinary kind, then release it into the wild (perhaps within 10 years), where it will displace the deadly variety."
Yes, indeed, 2010 was a very bad year to be a skeeter.
And the future for these blood-sucking insects (the females need a blood meal to develop their eggs) promises to be even worse.