Malaria

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

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

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 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