BBC News: GlaxoSmithKline is seeking regulatory approval for the world’s first vaccine against malaria, after promising trial data showed that it cut cases of the often-fatal disease in African children.
The company has been developing the vaccine for 3 decades and plans to submit a regulatory application to the European Medicines Agency.
Malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people every year.
Photo: Malaria infected mosquitoes (AFP)
The vaccine has only modest efficacy compared to other approved immunizations. And it’s a bit costly. But still, it has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives each year – which is great progress
California scientists are reporting a pair of victories in the epic struggle between man and mosquito.
A team at the University of California, Riverside, appears to have finally figured out how bugs detect the insect repellent known as DEET. And the team used its discovery to identify several chemical compounds that promise to be safer and cheaper than DEET, according to the report in the journal Nature.
Three of the new repellents are already approved by the Food and Drug Administration as food additives. “One of them is present in plum," says Anandasankar Ray, of the University of California, Riverside, who led the study. "The other is present in orange and jasmine oil. Some of them are present in grapes. And, as you can imagine, they smell really nice.”
The new repellents, if they pan out, could make a huge difference in developing countries where mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever are common, says Craig Montell, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who is not connected to the new research.
Though effective, DEET is too expensive for many people in developing countries, Ray. Also, he says, consumers have to be careful how they use the repellent. It can dissolve plastics, including nylon.
Even so, DEET has been the gold-standard bug repellent since the U.S. Army developed it in the 1940s, Ray says, despite many efforts to find something better. “The main reason why scientists haven’t been able to improve upon DEET is because they just didn’t know how DEET is detected by the insects,” he says.
Now, it appears, they do know, thanks to experiments with some genetically modified fruit flies in Ray’s lab. These custom-made flies have special nerve cells in their antennae that glow a fluorescent green when they react to DEET, Ray says.
The illustration shows four DEET-like mosquito repellents discovered by the team at the University of California, Riverside. Three of them are safe to eat. Courtesy of Pinky Kai/University of California, Riverside
Inktober Day #15 of Darkly-Inclined characters Inktober is Malaria from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. Malaria is a bit of a mixed character for me as while I wouldn’t call her a “Goth "character since they didn’t give her any Goth music references, she definitely was another lovable dark character because despite her being afraid of who Grim truly was (the Grim Reaper which was understandable), you could see she really did like things dark and eerie (hanging out in cemeteries and not being afraid of bats despite one smacking right into her face lol).
I wish she could’ve been a recurring character in the show. She could’ve been a friend for Grim when he wasn’t hanging out with Billy & Mandy (when they were at school) because while she was initially scared of him being the real Grim Reaper, she could’ve gotten to know him more and not be so afraid of him and became friends. Nonetheless, she was fun to draw. :)
Asima Chatterjee (1917-2006) was the first woman awarded a Doctor of Science by an Indian University–in 1944, by the University of Calcutta. A chemist, she published nearly 400 papers in national and international journals and much of her work has been extensively cited. Her work led to the development of anti-epileptic drugs & anti-malarial drugs.
She was also the first woman to be elected as the General President of the Indian Science Congress, a premier institution that oversees scientific research.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could erase disease with these happy organ erasers? Sadly the only two diseases to be eradicated worldwide are smallpox and rinderpest. We are still working to get rid of polio, yaws, dracunculiasis, malaria and so many more.
If you had magic powers, what disease or condition would you choose to wipe off the face of the Earth?
Can you hear that buzz? That’s the sound of mosquitoes waiting to ruin your summer barbecues and camping trips. With today’s mosquito repellents, we face an unfortunate choice: natural stuff that doesn’t work very well or DEET, which keeps blood-suckers at bay but might melt your swim trunks and give you a rash.
Anandasankar Ray, professor in the Entomology Department at UC Riverside, is working on new, better, safer alternatives — not by squirting thousands of random chemicals at mosquitoes, but by understanding exactly how a mosquito’s nose works.
Once Ray’s lab found how mosquitoes detect DEET, they were able to screen virtually nearly half a million chemicals to find alternatives that would act in the same way. Of the 1,000 candidates, over 100 came from fruits and plants and were already known to be safe. Instead of a harsh medicinal aroma, some of the new mosquito repellents Ray is developing smell like sandalwood or orange blossom.
Safer and cheaper mosquito repellents aren’t just great for saving your summer fun: they could have a real impact on global health.
“Nearly a billion people worldwide are affected by mosquito-borne diseases,” said Ray. “I am hopeful that this approach will lead to interventions that could be useful in the field and perhaps not only help protect us in our backyard barbeques, but also help have an impact on malaria.”
Blowing the cover of the stealthy malaria parasite:
Part of the reason why malaria is so persistent after infection occurs is that it is concealed from detection by white blood cells. Through most of their life cycles, the Plasmodium parasites that cause the disease hide within red blood and liver cells where they are effectively invisible.
That’s where the recently-studied and catchily-named compound (+)-SJ733 comes in. Research has shown this chemical to inhibit one of the parasite’s vital proteins in order to kickstart a series of physical changes for red blood cell in which it resides. This makes the infected cells look aged to the immune system, marking them for retirement by destruction as is normal.
By this mechanism, infected cells are systematically wiped out before the parasite can spread, and normal red blood cells are left unharmed! Trials so far have shown promising results and better yet, there is potential to “develop an affordable, fast-acting combination therapy that cures malaria with a single dose,” according to one of the co-authors of the study. Certainly, an affordable treatment would be welcome in countries where malaria is most prevalent.
Planning has now begun for human trials of the compound. The chances are that it won’t be seen in action for some time to come.
Image: two malaria-infected red blood cells, credit to Lennart Nilsson.
Tu Youyou is a Chinese medical scientist, pharmaceutical chemist, pharmacist, and educator. She is best known for discovering artemisinin (also known as qinghaosu) and dihydroartemisinin, both used to treat malaria. Her discovery saved millions of lives.
Her discovery of artemisinin and its treatment of malaria is regarded as a significant breakthrough of tropical medicine in the 20th century and health improvement for people of tropical developing countries in South Asia, Africa, and South America.
For her work, Tu received the 2011 Lasker Award in clinical medicine and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura. Tu is the first Chinese Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and the first citizen of the People’s Republic of China to receive the Nobel Prize in natural sciences, as well as the first Chinese person to receive the Lasker Award. She was born and educated and carried out research exclusively in China.
Text for today’s post was taken from Wikipedia.Please consider donating a few minutes to make a submission to Celebrate Women before the year is over.
Ronald Ross (13 May 1857 – 16 September 1932) received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his research on the transmission of malaria. Ross was the first Nobel recipient from Britain, and the first born outside Europe (Ross was born in India).
