Malaria Centre Newsletter, December 2017

1. News - WMR launch & MRC Unit Gambia 70th anniversary
2. Events
3. Conferences - MIM
4. Updates - Malaria Centre 20th anniversary & ASTMH awards
5. Highlighted publications

1. News

World Malaria Report 2017 launch

The 2017 WHO World Malaria Report was launched last week, Nov 29, and Sian Clarke, Jo Lines and James Logan from the Malaria Centre were present at Parliament to be involved in the discussions that followed.

Lots of discussions have been generated over the past week, including an expert commentary on the report provided by David Conway, which can be found here, and a related publication that was reviewed by the Independent with a comment from Jo Lines.

The full WHO report can be found here.

MRC Unit Gambia 70th anniversary

The MRC Unit Gambia celebrated its 70^th anniversary recently and members of the Malaria Centre have been to visit and join the celebration and symposium that took place. The symposium was organised over 27 - 29 November, which brought together world leaders in global health. The symposium took the opportunity to reflect on past successes and future challenges, with a specific focus on global, local and regional health.

In 2014, Brian Greenwood published an account of the important role that the Gambia has played in malaria research despite its very small size, including an account of the 'discovery' of Anopheles gambiae. More information on this can be found here.

Back to the top

2. Events

Malaria Centre events and activities

The Malaria Centre helps to organise, support and advertise seminars and activities that would be of interest our members.

We aim to keep you up to date by regularly posting event news on the Centre’s website, so don’t forget to keep checking back with us to see what’s coming up.

Image, Dr Alonso's guest seminar. Credit, Michael Osborne

If you have an event at the School that you think would be good to share with your fellow Malaria Centre members, please let us know!

Examples of previous seminars include:

‘Breaking out: egress of the malaria parasite from its host red blood cell’ by Professor Michael Blackman from The Francis Crick Institute
‘Malaria: Transmission and molecular biology tools’ by Dr Lynn Grignard from LSHTM
Including two special guest events from Dr Alassane Dicko, 2017 Royal Society Africa Prize winner, and Dr Pedro L. Alonso, Director of the WHO Global Malaria Programme

Back to the top

3. Conferences

7^th MIM Pan African Malaria Conference, April 15–20 2018

‘The Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM) was established in 1997 with a mission to strengthen and sustain through collaborative research and training, the capacity of malaria-endemic countries in Africa to carry out research that is required to develop and improve tools for malaria control and to strengthen the research-control interphase.’

Abstract submission has been extended to the 20 December.

Back to the top

4. Updates

Malaria Centre 20th anniversary

Next year the Malaria Centre will be celebrating its 20th anniversary! As part of this celebration the Centre will be running activities throughout the year and highlighting the great work that the Centre has been involved with over the last 20 years - so please keep checking back with us and join in our celebrations; we wouldn't have the anniversary if we didn't have our members! And if you have any ideas for what we could do to celebrate, please do let us know by contacting us on: malaria@LSHTM.ac.uk

LSHTM staff and students can stay in touch by signing up to the Malaria Centre mailing list, and we will be releasing information in our newsletter, which is available for everyone to sign up to.

ASTMH

This year ASTMH attracted 4614 attendees from 108 country with over 2,500 oral and poster presentations. Delegates from the LSHTM had a strong presence with a variety of presentations.

There were exciting results from the TRAC II (Tracking Resistance to Artemisinin Collaboration) study on the efficacy of Triple Artemisinin-based Combination Therapies for multidrug resistant P. falciparum parasites across 15 sites in Asia and Africa. This study revealed dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine plus mefloquine and artemether-lumefantrine plus amodiaquine were tolerable and safe, and cleared artemisinin-resistant P. falciparum parasites rapidly.

Results on IVERMAL study of high dose ivermectin with dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine also looked promising, suggesting long-lasting mosquitocidal effects and might complement existing tools to interrupt malaria transmission.

An update on the efficacy and safety of ACTs compared to quinine-based treatment (as recommended by WHO) for uncomplicated falciparum malaria in first trimester of pregnancy from a systematic review of individual patient data from Asia showed better efficacy and tolerability for ACTs.

The Malaria Centre is also proud to announce that Inke Lubis, a PhD student of Colin Sutherland, won the ASTMH Travel Award, Young Investigator Award, and First Prize for Clinical Research Award for her work on drug efficacy study in Indonesia - congratulations and great work!

Research from ASTMH was also picked up and reported on by Nature News, 'Resurrected malaria strategy saves thousands of lives in Africa', with comments from Brian Greenwood, which can be accessed here.

Back to the top

5. Highlighted publications

For this edition of the newsletter we have the fortune of presenting blog article alongside one of our highlighted publications, and a press release too. Thank you to all the authors who have helped make this possible!

The new research agenda for malaria elimination and global eradication stresses the need for innovation and integrated approaches

MalERA Refresh is the result of a consultative process with over 180 experts and seeks to accelerate progress to a world free from malaria, which included researchers from the Malaria Centre, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Imperial Network of Excellence in Malaria.

The outcome is a series of seven ‘malERA Refresh’ (malaria eradication research agenda) papers that have been published as a special collection in PLOS Medicine. The aim of this exercise, coordinated by the Malaria Eradication Scientific Alliance (MESA) with headquarters at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), was to define a forward-looking research and development agenda that will accelerate progress towards malaria elimination and global eradication.

Find out more here.

Markers in some malaria diagnosis tests are deleted in certain strains of malaria parasite - are these tests still effective?

Malaria parasites with gene deletions that affect a key target of rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) are circulating in East Africa. A report of this new finding, from research conducted by Malaria Centre members, has been published in Scientific Reports. The researchers identified Plasmodium falciparum parasites from eastern and western Kenya that have deletions of genes called pfhrp2 and pfhrp3, which code for histidine-rich proteins 2 (HRP2) and 3 (HRP3).

Find out more here.

Research Fellow, Lena Lorenz, has co-authored two recent publications, which can be found below:
Zewde et al 2017 Knowledge and perception towards net care and repair practice in Ethiopia
Kisinza et al 2017 Multiple insecticide resistance in Anopheles gambiae from Tanzania: a major concern for malaria vector control

For a list of publications please visit the Malaria Centre website’s publication page.

Back to the top

And finally, to help get everyone in the festive spirit -

What athlete is warmest in winter? 
A long jumper!

Why did the turkey join the band? 
Because it had the drumsticks!

Why do birds fly south for the winter?
Because it’s too far to walk.

And yes, you can use these!

Sent this newsletter by a friend?

You can sign up to this newsletter using the link at the bottom of the page, or if you are a member of LSHTM and want to learn more about the Malaria Centre, you can sign up to the Centre here.

Copyright © 2017 London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, All rights reserved.

Want to change how you receive these emails?
unsubscribe from this newsletter list update subscription preferences

If you have signed up to other mailing lists with us, you may still receive our emails. Please let us know if you would like to be removed from all Malaria Centre mailing lists.

Our mailing address is:
malaria@lshtm.ac.uk

This email was sent to <<Email Address>>
why did I get this? unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
LSHTM Malaria Centre · London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine · Keppel Street · London, London WC1E7HT · United Kingdom