In advance of World Malaria Malaria Day, ASTMH asked some of our malaria expert members and colleagues to reflect on the global fight against the disease and to peer into their crystal balls and let us know what might be on the horizon. Other interviews in this series include: Admiral Tim Ziemer of the President's Malaria Initiative, ASTMH President Alan J. Magill, ASTMH Councilor Laurence Slutsker of the CDC, Judith E. Epstein of the Naval Medical Research Center and Kent Kester of Sanofi Pasteur.
Jessica Taaffe (@JessicaTaaffe), PhD, Global Health and Science Consultant
Why are you drawn to malaria research?
I was (and still am) drawn to malaria research because of its global impact. Although we don’t have to really worry about it in the United States, it’s responsible for so much disease in many parts of the world, and a huge killer of young children, who are the most susceptible to it.
I did my graduate thesis work on HIV for several years, specifically focusing on immunology in monkey models. There’s a lot of work being done in this area for HIV, but less so for malaria, and I saw a niche for me in malaria research. I knew I wanted to continue working on a disease with huge global impact, and one that I felt that my research efforts and expertise could really make a difference and address a gap in knowledge. There’s still so much to learn about what provides immunological protection from malaria infection and disease, or how the immune response contributes to the latter, and malaria monkey models are a great way to start exploring these areas.
As we approach World Malaria Day, what is the biggest challenge with this disease?
I think setting priorities in the fight against malaria and balancing both programmatic and research and development efforts is the biggest challenge. In a funding climate that is becoming limited for both global health and science, choosing which programs or research to fund is become increasingly important, and we must be very careful in these decisions, choosing interventions WE KNOW will work and the most promising technology and research to address problems and challenges in the field. The balance is imperative - I would argue for more money for R&D, but I wouldn’t want to take away from measures like bed net distribution, that are also important tools in our fight against malaria.
Where do you see the most promise?
I see the most long-term promise in investing in R&D for malaria, especially basic science. Both malaria infection and its causative agent are incredibly complex and there is still so much to learn about them. A better understanding of both natural or induced correlates of immunologic protection against malaria will lead to better malaria vaccines, and more research on the parasite itself could lead to novel drugs to treat malaria infection. In the near and long-term future, we will need these biomedical tools as we continue our fight against this global disease.