From gene editing to death traps, Seattle scientists innovate in race to end malaria
DON’T DISCOUNT THE DRUGS
While innovations to alter, control or kill mosquitoes catch the eye, drugs and vaccines should not be neglected given that parasite-carrying people travel further and live longer than mosquitoes, said Bruno Moonen, malaria deputy director at Gates.
More than 30 malaria vaccines are under development, with Seattle’s scientists hoping for more success than the first approved vaccine, called RTS,S or Mosquirix, which is only partially effective and needs to be administered in four doses.
Yet a single-dose cure that would wipe out all parasites in humans could soon replace existing artemisinin combination treatment (ACTs) drugs, which must be taken over three days.
“When people fail to complete the course, it increases the risk of resistance developing, and this is a worry,” said Larry Slutsker, malaria program leader at health organization PATH.
Counterfeit malaria drugs in sub-Saharan Africa are another concern to health experts as they contain no artemisinin, leaving people sick, or substandard amounts, which increases resistance, according to Ben Wilson, a senior research scientist at IV.
Wilson and his peers have developed a tool which uses light waves to instantly analyze malaria tablets in a region where as many as one in 10 drugs are estimated to be fake or substandard.
“Counterfeit antimalarials are a billion-dollar industry, and new technologies are needed to stay ahead of criminal networks,” said Wilson, adding that the tool could soon be adopted by state inspectors, pharmacies and aid agencies.
FUNDING FEARS
Outside of the malaria-focused labs dotted around Seattle, experts are turning to data in the fight to end the disease.
“Data used to be stuck in spreadsheets,” said Neal Myrick, of computer software company Tableau. “How can you make sense of that?,” he added, pointing to a database consisting of 300,000 entries before showing off an interactive heat map in its place.
Detailed maps on prevalence, mortality, treatment rates and use of bed nets, and data modeling tools, allow users to monitor malaria cases, track the origin and predict its spread.
“Innovations to fight malaria are exciting, but surveillance is essential to enable scarce resources to be best spent to make the biggest impact,” said Stephen Lim of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
It is the issue of limited resources that troubles many of those fighting to eradicate malaria by 2040 – who calculate that more than $100 billion will be needed to finish the job.
In a region like sub-Saharan Africa, home to nine in 10 of the world’s malaria deaths, domestic spending on the disease will need to rise considerably in the coming years, experts say.
Yet this may prove difficult in countries like Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo – they account for 40 percent of global malaria deaths – which are struggling economically.
“In DRC … we see drug shortages, issues with payments to health workers, and irregular distributions of bednets,” said Marit De Wit, health advisor for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in DRC. “The parasite has a free ride in parts of the country.”
Health experts also fear that as the number of cases falls, it will become harder to maintain the momentum to eradicate malaria among donors, governments and people in endemic regions.
Yet for Seattle’s scientists and innovators, such as Ojo, such concerns are no obstacle to their hunt for solutions.
“When I caught malaria for the fortieth or fiftieth time, I realized that it never gets any better, or any easier,” he said of the disease, which can strike a patient several times a year.
“It made me realize that we need to innovate and strive not just to treat or control the disease, but to end it for good.”
Malaria No More and the Washington Global Health Alliance provided a travel grant for this story.
(Reporting By Kieran Guilbert, Additional Reporting by Aaron Ross in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)