Triple artemisinin-based combination therapy
Malaria parasites can become resistant to the drugs that are used to treat them. New antimalarials often takes many years before they become accessible to the communities in need.
Adding another carefully selected partner drug to standard first line treatments (ACTs) could serve as a strategy to delay or prevent resistance and prolong the effectiveness of antimalarial drugs.
Mahidol Oxford Research Unit Tropical Network (MORU) researchers are leading large clinical studies on the efficacy, tolerability, safety of triple artemisinin-based combination therapies (TACTs) in Asia and Africa. They are conducting studies on mathematical modeling of TACTs and studies related to ethical and market positioning aspects.
Star homes project
The ‘Star Homes Project’, led by MORU, aims to combat malaria in Africa through affordable housing with effective mosquito barriers.
By November 2022, 110 homes across 55 Tanzanian villages had been constructed, featuring two-story structures with screened facades and self-closing doors for ventilation.
Speeding up vaccine development
In controlled malaria infection studies, healthy participants are deliberately infected with malaria and studied carefully to provide insights on the progression and pathogenesis of malaria. Such studies are ongoing at hospitals in Thailand and Kenya, conducted by MORU and KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) researchers.
Infection studies can give insights into the early stages of infection, immune response, the efficacy of current interventions, in particular for malaria which has limited alternative models available.
This approach is often time and cost-effective compared to other study designs and typically requires a smaller number of participants.
The information gathered from such studies is useful for determining correlates of immune protection that can inform drug and vaccine development for children, pregnant women, and older population, even when they are not involved in other trials.