malaria

The Malaria Vaccine Core, under the direction of Drs. Mary Galinski and Alberto Moreno, has the broad purpose of establishing and providing specialized procedures, technical expertise and parasite materials that are specifically relevant for basic malaria research projects – and to meet the needs of pre-clinical trials and pathogenesis studies. The Core was initially established to carry out preclinical malaria vaccine trials in non-human primates in collaboration with the US Navy’s Malaria Research Program and the Malaria Vaccine Initiative. It continues to support such pre-clinical vaccine trial studies, and has been expanding its functions to meet the varied current and projected needs of the EVC’s Malaria Research Program. For example, the Core has been establishing 1) Anopheles’ mosquito infection and dissection capabilities, 2) real time PCR methodologies to assess parasite loads in the liver, to assess the effectiveness of pre-erythrocytic vaccines; 3) parasite culture and processing methods for multiple species of Plasmodium; 4) infected blood processing and evaluation procedures; 5) procedures to monitor chronic and severe malaria infections in animal models; 6) infected erythrocyte micromanipulation techniques; 7) methods to quantify erythrocyte lifespan in vivo using flow cytometry; 8) FACs-based erythrocyte binding assays; 9) recombinant protein expression systems to aid vaccine development and immunoepidemiological studies; 10) bioinformatic analyses to evaluate parasite diversity and molecular evolution; 11) microarray and proteomic procedures; and 12) specific assays for testing anti-malaria effector mechanisms and studying immunological memory responses.

The Emory Vaccine Center has five scientific cores, each specializing in a particular research function such as laboratory assays or vaccine trials management. The cores are funded through various sources, and hence function somewhat differently, but all are vital to the vaccine research process at Emory and at other institutions throughout the U.S. and the world.