Last Updated: 21/07/2017
An innovative pipeline to unlock the systematic investigation of Plasmodium vivax across its entire life cycle
Objectives
To establish the complete P. vivax life cycle; systematically investigating its gene expression, pathways of invasion, biology of dormancy and reactivation, and susceptibility to small molecules.
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH), United States
Plasmodium vivax is the most frequent and widespread cause of human malaria, and poses unique challenges to treatment and eradication as a result of its dormant liver form, the hypnozoite. Unfortunately, both basic research into the biology of this parasite and the development of P. vivax antimalarials have been critically hampered by the lack of in vitro models to recapitulate the parasite life cycle (from mosquito to human liver to human blood and back to mosquito). We have assembled a team of investigators with expertise in all of the individual P. vivax life cycle stages to establish the complete P. vivax life cycle in Cambridge. This team has been coupled with four technology platforms at the Broad (Broad Technology Lab, Genomic Perturbation, Imaging, and Therapeutics) to then enable a systematic investigation of this elusive organism including its gene expression, pathways of invasion, biology of dormancy and reactivation, and susceptibility to small molecules. The entire life cycle has never been recapitulated anywhere in the world, and the impact of coupling Broad capabilities to P. vivax biology and therapeutics would be both catalytic for the Broad community and transformative for the field.
Dec 2015 — Dec 2017
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