Preface

Malaria: progress, problems and plans in the genomic era

The global burden of human malaria is enormous,

amounting to hundreds of millions of new infections and

millions of deaths annually. This is the situation more than

100 years after two key discoveries; one that the infection is

caused by a blood-dwelling apicomplexan parasite belong-

ing to the genus Plasmodium (Plasmodium falciparum,

Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium

malariae cause human infections) and that the parasites

are transmitted by blood-sucking female anopheline

mosquitoes (more than 50 species are known vectors). It

was then followed by many remarkable discoveries, espe-

cially during the last 50 years. The hope of eradicating

malaria with the use of insecticides such as DDT and the

‘wonder-drug’ (chloroquine) dissipated with the realisation

of the problem of insecticide resistance in the mosquito

vector and the emergence of drug-resistance in the parasites.

I suppose one could look at today’s malaria situation in two

ways. One would be to call it a failure of global efforts to

stop the malaria infection and transmission, and the other

would be to take advantage of all the discoveries to date and

march ahead to develop a new arsenal to stage a war against

this public health nuisance.

Truly, over the last 3 decades we have seen renewed

efforts at all levels, including policy makers, scientists,

funding agencies and numerous private foundations. This

goes to prove the renewed commitment and determination

to organise efforts in a collective and cooperative fashion.

Malaria is a problem that needs efforts at social and beha-

vioural levels on one side to highly sophisticated biological,

biochemical, immunological and molecular tools on the

other side. The establishment of the Johns Hopkins Malaria

Research Institute (JHMRI) in May 2001 with the generous

donation of 100 million US dollars from an anonymous

donor hopes to exemplify such renewed commitment. The

JHMRI launched its establishment by organising an inter-

national meeting ‘Malaria: Progress, Problems and Plans in

the Genomic Era’ from January 27–29, 2002.

The agenda for the meeting was to bring together minds

used to looking at malaria from different angles: clinical,

epidemiological, entomological, pharmacological,

biochemical, immunological and molecular. It was hoped

that the meeting would provide a forum for discussion on

What has gone wrong? What is going on? and What could

be possible, especially in the genomic era? Presentations in

the various sessions included discussion on genomics and

proteomics (Stephen Hoffman, Malcolm Gardner, Pradip-

sinh Rathod), Plasmodium Biology and Disease (Malcolm

Molyneux, Mats Wahlgren, Nirbhay Kumar, Sanjeev

Krishna, Victor Nussenzweig, Daniel Goldberg), Anopheles

Biology, Ecology and Control (Lee Howard, Marcelo

Jacobs-Lorena, Richard Hunt, Gregory Lanzaro, Clive

Shiff, Gregory Glass, Douglas Norris), Malaria vaccines

(Daniel Carucci, Anthony Holder, Richard Carter),

Chemotherapy, drug resistance and novel targets (Steven

Meshnick, Gary Posner, Theresa Shapiro, David Sullivan,

Anders Bjorkman, Thomas Wellems, Christopher Plowe,

Ernesto Freire), a guest address by Stephen Chandiwana

and a keynote address by Wim Hol. How far did the orga-

nisers succeed in achieving the goals set out for the confer-

ence? The range of topics covered and many represented in

this thematic issue speaks for the achievement of the confer-

ence. The uninterrupted discussion after each presentation

was an experiment that caused only minor delays in the

scientific program at a tremendous gain emanating from

free-flowing discussion.

This thematic issue contains contributions made by many

of the speakers. A few other invited articles provide discus-

sion on additional topics of value in terms of the biology of

the parasite and vaccine trial. The genomic sequence of P.

falciparum and Anopheles gambiae and annotation analyses

are due to be completed and released by the end of 2002.

Newer molecular tools are being developed and employed

to address issues such as global gene and protein expression

profiles in the parasites during normal physiological devel-

opment and during responses to environmental and drug

pressure. It is rapidly emerging that approaches based on

mass spectroscopic and structural analyses may help in

rational drug and vaccine design. It is hoped that when

there is another opportunity to revisit some of these issues

at yet another conference at the JHMRI, we would see excit-

ing and fruitful discoveries providing tools to rapidly diag-

nose and control the disease and curb transmission of

malaria caused by not only P. falciparum but also equally

important, P. vivax.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all the members of the organising committee of

International Journal for Parasitology 32 (2002) 1537–1538

0020-7519/02/$20.00 q 2002 Australian Society for Parasitology Inc. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

PII: S0020-7519(02)00180-7

www.parasitology-online.com

the meeting held in Baltimore, January 27–29, 2002. The

conference was co-sponsored by the JHMRI and The Elli-

son Medical Foundation. This thematic issue was made

possible by review articles contributed by those who

presented papers at the meeting and a few others invited

to contribute articles. I also wish to thank all the reviewers,

Susan Booker for administrative help and Konrad Crispino

for the cover design. My very special thanks go to Alan

Johnson and Maria Meuleman for their support and

patience. In the end I hope that the readers of this thematic

issue will find the papers as valuable and interesting as did

all the conference participants.

Nirbhay Kumar*

Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute, Molecular

Microbiology and Immunology, Bloomberg School of

Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA

N. Kumar / International Journal for Parasitology 32 (2002) 1537–15381538

* Tel.: 11-410-955-7177; fax: 11-410-955-0105.

E-mail address: nkumar@jhsph.edu (N. Kumar).