Director's Seminar: Unraveling the mechanisms of immunity to malaria

NIH Director's Seminar Series Approximately 500 million cases of P. falciparum malaria occur annually among the world ’ s poorest populations, claiming the lives of nearly a million children each year in Africa alone. The development of a malaria vaccine is widely viewed as a key step toward malaria control and possibly eradication, yet current malaria vaccine candidates confer only partial, short-lived protection at best. Optimism that a highly effective malaria vaccine can be developed stems in part from the observation that humans can acquire immunity to malaria through repeated P. falciparum infections. However, the nature of the immune response that confers protection against malaria is poorly understood. In the Malaria Infection Biology and Immunity Unit (MIBIU), Dr. Peter Crompton's Lab, Malaria Infection Biology and Immunity Unit, NIAID, aims to fill this critical knowledge gap by applying recent advances in immunology and genomics-based technology to carefully conducted longitudinal cohort studies in malaria-endemic areas. Ultimately, an improved understanding of the human immune response to P. falciparuminfection is likely to provide key insights into how malaria immunity can be enhanced through vaccination.Air date: 1/24/2020 12:00:00 PM
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