Project to study the hiding places of the malaria parasite

Hernando A. del Portillo

Institut de Salut Global de Barcelona (ISGlobal), Spain

Infectious diseases, many of them forgotten, kill 17 million people every year in the poorest regions on the planet. One such disease is the malaria caused by the world’s most widely distributed malaria parasite, Plasmodium vivax.

One of the many unanswered questions is why some people develop serious forms of this malaria despite presenting low levels of the parasite in their blood. One hypothesis is that the pathogen hides in the bone marrow and spleen, and that these hiding places enable the parasites to produce nanovesicles called exosomes.

The project develops a miniature model of human bone marrow and spleen (organ-on-a-chip technology) to investigate the parasite’s hiding places in the organism, uncover the role of the exosomes and eliminate malaria.

• Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, Portugal

• Universitat de Barcelona, Spain

• Mahidol University, Thailand

Novel organ-on-a-chip technology to study extracellular vesicles-mediated cryptic infections in Plasmodium vivax malaria

€996,930.57