Emergence of worrying Artemisinin resistance in Senegal: Clinical investigations and in vitro genome editing for malaria elimination programs in Senegal and Accra | New Voices in Infection Biology

If you are interested in joining the seminar, please contact: vseminars@mpiib-berlin.mpg.de

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Talk abstract:

Both the robust Africans immunity and the lack of ressources to track emergence of Artemisinin resistance are health problems that could jeopardise recent gains achieved by malaria elimination programs in Africa. Sporadic cases of delay in parasite clearance upon Artemisinin-based Combination therapies (ACTs) have been reported in few African countries. Our Ring Survival assays (RSA) data and parasite clearance studies confirm the efficacy of ACT in circulating parasites collected between 2019 and now in Ghana and Senegal. However a worrying case PfKelch13R515K mutation was reported in a Health center in Kaolack a central Senegalese region where the human movements between the Gambia, Mali are considerably important and not controlled. We have generated transgenic lines and found that contrarily to R662I a PfKelch13 SNP found in Ethiopia and reported to be associated with parasite clearance delay, R515K is conferring to increased RSA in laboratory strains.

We here demonstrate the need to combine clinical research and fundamental research to monitor and track emergence of Artemisinin resistance in African countries.

Our finding indicates that investigating the biological relevance of gene resistance markers in African background parasites will be critical in the malaria elimination programs. At Institut Pasteur, Dakar we have a task force operating in all 14 regions with a focus in remote health care centers. With our collaborators and funder agencies, we are now able to provide the key research programs to foster and support malaria elimination programs in Senegal and Ghana. Our contribution and future objectives will be discussed during the webinar.