Malaria

Mosquito-borne diseases like malaria represent an ongoing global health crisis of (literally) biblical proportions. LJ Zwiebel has identified the biological factors that help female mosquitos mate, suck blood and sense environmental threats. Est. reading time: 1.5 mins. Read More

By reproducing conditions under which malaria occurs in nature, the Zwiebel Lab finds that the deadly pathogens responsible for human malaria provide a specific adaptive advantage to disease-transmitting mosquitoes, explaining the persistence of this ancient disease. Est. reading time: 2 mins. Read More

A new study shows that insect immune and circulatory systems cooperate to fight infection, similar to those in mammals. Read More

One of the keys to quickly diagnosing anti-malarial drug resistance — potentially saving lives — lies in testing whole blood instead of extracting DNA, eliminating processing steps that can take hours or days. A team of Vanderbilt University biomedical engineers cracked the code to doing just that and are working on applying the method to... Read More

Doctors formerly had to extract the malaria parasite’s DNA first, virtually impossible to do in rural, low-resource areas. Read More

A team of Vanderbilt biologists has found that the malaria mosquito has a second complete set of odor receptors that are specially tuned to human scents. Read More

Genes used by the insect parasite Wolbachia to control its hosts' reproduction can be used to help control the spread of mosquito-borne diseases like dengue, Zika and malaria. Read More

Vanderbilt engineers have developed a new method for duplicating DNA that makes devices small enough to hold in your hand that are capable of identifying infectious agents before symptoms appear. Read More

A novel "origami" rapid diagnostic test for malaria has received a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Read More

Vanderbilt investigators have developed a way to detect malaria that is faster and more sensitive than current clinical methods — a development that has the potential to make malaria detection significantly less expensive and more stable. Read More

Vanderbilt biologist Julián Hillyer is this year's recipient of the H.B. Ward Medal given by the American Society of Parasitologists. Read More

Vanderbilt is one of 220 institutions whose scholars are invited to apply to a new competition. Read More

In the latest VUCast: See a powerful new weapon in the fight against malaria and how a 3-D printer speeds up the research; meet a little dog that won a big award; and hear the Melodores, winners of NBC's "The Sing-Off." Watch now! Read More

Using the same mechanism that causes evaporating coffee to leave a ring behind, an interdisciplinary team of Vanderbilt researchers is designing a simple blood test to diagnose malaria in the developing world without electricity or special training. Read More

Vanderbilt biologists played an important supporting role in a major genetic study of malaria-carrying mosquitoes published this week in the journal "Science." Read More

Vanderbilt biologists have discovered that mosquito sperm have a “sense of smell” and that some of same chemicals that the mosquito can smell cause the sperm to swim harder. Read More

Researchers are targeting a possible new weapon in the fight against malaria, science that could also be applied in the fight against other devastating mosquito-borne illnesses, according to a Vanderbilt study published in PLOS ONE. Read More

Vanderbilt University investigators have developed a new strategy for identifying the “bits” of a pathogen that spark a protective immune response. Read More

Vanderbilt biologists have discovered that mosquitoes possess a previously unknown mechanism for destroying pathogens which takes advantage of the peculiarities of the insect’s circulatory system to increase its effectiveness. Read More

After more than a decade spent successfully decoding the malaria mosquito’s sense of smell, the Zwiebel Lab has added ant olfaction to its research repertoire and has just received a major grant to pursue this new avenue for the next four years. Read More