PROMOTING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BETWEEN INDIA AND THE U.S.
Medicine
George Washington University
The malaria parasite life cycle inside the mosquito is critical for the transmission process. The way a malaria transmission-blocking vaccine will work is that “we will immunize populations with the vaccine, and let the mosquitoes do the job.” When mosquitoes feed on blood they will pick up the antibodies, and the antibodies will work inside the mosquito midgut and block parasite development, hopefully, completely. In the lab and in models we can achieve almost 100% blocking of parasite development in mosquitoes.
In other research projects we are characterizing molecular mechanisms involving DNA double strand break repair and recombination process in the parasites.