Date (news release) |
Category |
Details |
Country
|
January 14 |
Drug |
Biologists at University of California, Berkeley develop new ways to genetically modify yeast to produce antimalarial artemisinin, with the purpose of getting the lowest possible price (in China, where most of the crop is grown, the price swung from 200$ to 1,100$ per kilogram).[5] |
United States
|
January 14 |
Vaccine |
Researchers at Tulane University manage to use Escherichia coli bacteria to inexpensively manufacture protein CHrPfs25, which is critical to the development of a malaria vaccine.[6] |
United States
|
January 16 |
Testing |
United Kingdom biotech firm develops a handheld device able to detect infectious diseases such as malaria in just 15 minutes. The device is expected to be used by professionals in rural areas of developing nations to test more efficiently.[7] |
United Kingdom
|
February 10 |
Vaccine |
iBio Inc., a manufacturer of biological products, reports the initiation of a Phase 1 human safety and immunogenicity clinical study of a transmission-blocking malaria vaccine candidate. Clearance was obtained from the FDA.[8][9] |
United States
|
February 23 |
Parasite |
Two research teams working independently discover that a single protein (AP2-G) acts as the master genetic switch that triggers the development of male and female sexual forms of the malaria parasite.[10] |
United States, United Kingdom
|
March 10 |
Vector |
Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Michigan, find that many areas and land masses are experiencing a gradual but noticeable warming, prompting the risk of causing malaria's domain to expand.[11] |
United Kingdom, United States
|
March 13 |
Testing |
Stanford University professor develops US$50 cents, foldscope paper microscope that can diagnose malaria.[12] |
United States
|
April 17 |
Vaccine |
Indian scientists report having obtained promising vaccine candidate against malaria, showing 80 to 85% efficacy in mice.[13] |
India
|
April 24 |
Resistance |
International team manages to identify a genetic marker of artemisinin resistance, after having first created a Plasmodium strain in the laboratory that resists high levels of artemisinin and comparing its DNA with the non–resistant parent strain.[14][15] |
|
April 25 |
Campaign |
School children and volunteers from Mangalore, India, launch the Guppy movement campaign, a movement with aims at controlling malaria by using guppy fish to eliminate mosquito larvae.[16][17][18] |
India
|
May 22 |
Vaccine |
Researchers from Brown University, Rhode Island Hospital and the National Institutes of Health discover protective antibodies in protein PfSEA-1 that is essential for malaria–causing parasites to escape from inside red blood cells. These antibodies, which were found in malaria–resistant children from Tanzania are tested in mice, leading to a significant protection against malaria.[19] [20][21][22][23] |
United States
|
June 10 |
Vector |
Research team at Imperial College London manages to genetically modify Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes so that the modified mosquitoes produce 95% male offspring. More importantly, this reproductive tendency is found to be inherited by the offspring of the modified mosquitoes.[24][25][26] |
United Kingdom
|
June 13 |
Evaluation |
Researchers from Imperial College London, Institut Pasteur Paris and other organizations call for new methods to evaluate malaria programs.[27] |
|
June 30 |
Parasite/Vector |
Researchers from Pennsylvania State University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology find that malaria Plasmodium parasite in mice alters their body odor to entice mosquitoes.[28][29] |
United States
|
July 9 |
Parasite |
Researchers at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston claims having evidence that malaria parasite lurks in the bone marrow, flexible tissue in the interior of bones where blood cells are produced.[30][31] |
United States
|
July 21 |
Drug |
Scientists at University College London discover cheap anti-malarial drug chloroquine could prevent liver cancer.[32][33] |
United Kingdom
|
July 17 |
Parasite |
Scientists from the Burnet Institute, Deakin University and Monash University in Australia manage to starve the malaria parasite Plasmodium of important proteins essential to its survival, providing a target for the development of new antimalarial drugs.[34][35] |
Australia
|
July 21 |
Testing |
Researchers at Monash University and the University of Melbourne in Australia make use of advanced military hardware meant for missile defense and turn it into a way to rapidly identify malaria parasites in humans.[36][37] |
Australia
|
July 29 |
Vaccine |
After conducting advanced trial in several African countries involving 15,000 infants and children, British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline asks the European Medicine's Authority to approve RTS,S vaccine for global use.[38] |
|
August 10 |
Parasite |
Biological engineers at the Massachusets Institute of Technology demonstrate that CRISPR genome-editing technique can disrupt a single parasite gene with a success rate of up to 100% — in a matter of weeks. This approach could enable much more rapid malaria gene analysis and boost drug-development efforts.[39] |
United States
|
August 24 |
Testing |
Scientific paper describes method based on computer vision algorithms similar to those used in facial recognition systems combined with visualization of only the diagnostically most relevant areas as a means for obtaining a significantly improved malaria diagnostic. [40] |
|
September 3 |
Parasite |
Professor at the University of Connecticut designs a self-assembling protein nanoparticle that shows to be effective at getting the immune system to attack malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, after it enters the body and before it has a chance to hide and aggressively spread.[41] |
United States
|
September 9 |
Testing |
Researchers at Singapore–MIT alliance develop an inexpensive device that can accurately diagnose malaria within minutes by using only a droplet of blood.[42] |
United States
|
September 10 |
Control |
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco develop an online platform that health workers around the world could use to predict where malaria is likely to be transmitted using data on Google Earth Engine.[43] |
United States
|
October 22 |
Control |
Researchers on the island of Borneo make use of flying robots to map out areas affected by malaria parasite Plasmodium knowlesi, which most commonly infects macaque monkeys. The small camera-carrying drone creates maps and digital surface models of the land and vegetation surrounding communities where P. knowlesi has turned up in humans. [44] |
Malaysia
|
October 27 |
Vector |
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University manage to “vaccinate” mosquitos against the parasite that causes malaria and the virus that causes dengue, by using bacteria Chromobacterium, which prevents the pathogens from effectively invading and colonizing mosquito guts.[45][46] |
United States
|
November 3 |
Funding |
Microsoft magnate Bill Gates announces his foundation will give away $500 million during 2014 to combat diseases like malaria on top of the $50 million it already committed to fighting Ebola.[47] |
United States
|
November 6 |
Parasite |
Infections with the parasite Plasmodium knowlesi show increase in the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah on the island of Borneo. Ther parasite, which is carried by long-tailed and pig-tailed macaques, appears to be jumping to people as a result of deforestation.[48][49][50] |
Malaysia
|
December 4 |
Symptom |
Researchers at New York University School of Medicine find that blood pressure build-up from white blood cells may cause cerebral malaria death.[51][52]
|
United States
|
December 9 |
Parasite |
Researchers at the University of Basel and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute develop so-called nanomimics of host cell membranes that trick parasites, leading to the possibility of novel treatment and vaccination strategies in the fight against malaria and other infectious diseases.[53][54] |
Switzerland
|
December 9 |
Report |
The World Health Organisation publishes its annual World Malaria Report, communicating a decrease in worldwide malaria mortality by 47% Between 2000-13. The rate of decrease in Africa –where 90% of malaria occurs– is reported at 54%.[55] |
|
December 11 |
Resistance |
Researchers at Nanyang Technological University report having discovered exactly how the malaria parasite is developing resistance towards the most important front-line drugs used to treat the disease, after having analyzed 1,000 malaria samples taken from patients in the area of the Greater Mekong Subregion.[56] |
Singapore
|
December 19 |
Funding |
Google.org, the charitable arm of Google, announces that it's giving a $600,000 grant to Malaria No More to embark on a potentially transformative data mining project in Nigeria. The grant is part of a pot of $15 million that Google.org is giving out to organizations that use technology to solve the world's biggest problems. In Africa, where 1 billion mobile phone subscriptions are predicted by 2015, it is expected that public health researchers could have one billion ways to communicate with—and collect data from—the people who are most at risk of catching malaria, a disease that has traditionally been extremely difficult to track.[57][58][59] |
|