Scientists make groundbreaking discovery that could end a deadly disease: 'This … will be an invaluable resource'
With 249 million malaria cases worldwide each year, leading to approximately 608,000 deaths, this discovery is a huge leap forward. P. knowlesi is an emerging public health threat in Southeast Asia, and until now, researchers lacked a complete understanding of the genes necessary for its survival in human blood cells.
Using a cutting-edge genetic approach called transposon mutagenesis, scientists were able to pinpoint which genes are critical for the parasite's growth — providing a road map for new, more effective drugs.
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"Emerging drug resistance to the small number of antimalarial drugs is a growing problem," said Manoj Duraisingh, one of the study's lead authors. "This map will be an invaluable resource to help researchers combat one of the leading causes of infectious disease death around the world."
So why is this such a big deal? Because understanding the parasite at the genetic level gives scientists a major advantage in tackling malaria at its source. This knowledge could lead to better drug designs that target weak points in the parasite's genetic code — helping to reduce the risk of resistance before it even begins.
What's more, the study's findings also shed light on another major malaria-causing parasite, Plasmodium vivax, which has been notoriously difficult to study because of its inability to be cultured in lab conditions. By understanding P. knowlesi, researchers are gaining critical insights into P. vivax, bringing them one step closer to better treatments for all forms of malaria.
This discovery is also timely, given that global warming is creating ideal conditions for the spread of malaria. Rising temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns are expanding mosquito habitats, allowing malaria-carrying insects to thrive in new regions. As health experts warn of an increase in mosquito-borne diseases, breakthroughs like this offer hope in the fight against their spread.
As governments and organizations work to combat malaria, scientific advances like this could be game-changers. By understanding the parasite's genetic blueprint, researchers are paving the way for more targeted, effective treatments — bringing us closer to a future when malaria is no longer a major global health threat.
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Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Boston Globe
Harvard was planning to distribute 100 air conditioners to Boston residents. Then came the Trump funding freeze.
For someone like Brown, who suffers from a lung disease that makes it hard to breathe, it's more than just miserable; it's also a health risk. Advertisement One hundred Boston residents were supposed to receive a window unit as early as June as part of a Harvard University study of making air conditioning more widely accessible, especially to those with medical conditions, as summers grow hotter and more humid. But as part of its far-reaching assault on the university, the Trump administration rescinded the money for the project. As a result, some residents, including Brown, received their units late, while others won't get them at all. Related : 'It really breaks my heart that yesterday was the day that folks could have really benefited from already having an air conditioner,' Gary Adamkiewicz, the project's leader and an associate professor of environmental health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in June, one day after temperatures hit 102 degrees. 'I was praying that the first heatwave in Boston would hold off until mid-July.' Advertisement As the Trump administration erased $3 billion in federal funding to Harvard this year as punishment for what it calls liberal bias and an alleged failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitism, the public health school was especially hard hit. The school depends on the federal government for 40 percent of its budget, and Washington's actions have upended the work of researchers, slowing or stopping projects that reach into the day-to-day lives of Americans trying to improve their situation in the most basic ways. 'People think of research as this ivory tower thing, just to learn for the sake of learning,' said Jonathan Levy, chair of the environmental health department at the Boston University School of Public Health, who was not involved in the Harvard study. 'But these are practical projects to help the most vulnerable in society.' Harvard has sued the Trump administration over the funding cuts, and a decision in the case is pending after oral arguments last week. Should the decision favor Harvard, the Trump administration likely will appeal. Other studies focused on the health of Bostonians were also hit. Dr. Mary Rice, a pulmonologist and director of the public health school's Center for Climate Health, and the Global Environment lost $750,000 for the final year of a five-year grant to study Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, or COPD. She enrolled 180 residents in the Boston area with COPD in a randomized clinical trial testing whether air purifiers protect them from harmful pollution, which can cause fatal asthma-like attacks in people with the illness. Advertisement The elaborate project included installing real air purifiers in half the homes and sham ones in the other half to allow for a robust comparison. Rice was not going to give up easily. She raised enough through bridge grants offered by Harvard to finish the study, but still does not have enough money to analyze blood and nasal fluid samples from participants to look for biomarkers of pollution exposure and inflammatory responses. She will store the samples in a freezer while she tries to raise additional funds. 'I have put so much energy into this study,' she said. 'I am trying to find a way.' Adamkiewicz's air conditioner study was part of a $3.75-million three-year grant that also included two other heat-related projects. The plan is for half of the participants to get air conditioning units this summer and half next summer, allowing researchers to compare the two groups. Participants, who must be ages 55 to 95, will fill out questionnaires about their health, documenting symptoms and doctors visits, and sensors will record the temperature and humidity in their homes. After several delays, Adamkiewicz scraped together enough money to move forward with a scaled back version of the project for 60 city residents, some of whom live in public housing, others in private residences. But the two other heat-related projects were canceled entirely: one to paint the roofs of 32 homes in South Africa white to see if that lowers indoor temperatures and improves residents' health; the second in Madagascar to open cooling centers that include freezers for fish, a diet staple that spoils faster in extreme temperatures. Given Boston's older housing stock, many people live without central air conditioning, and that is especially true for subsidized housing, most of which was built between the 1930s and 1960s. Of the roughly 10,000 units owned by the Boston Housing Authority, just 250 have ductless mini-splits that provide heating and cooling. Advertisement Brian Jordan, spokesman for the BHA, said Mayor Wu's administration is moving to install mini-splits in units as it upgrades properties over time. But this costly undertaking will take years. Meanwhile, he said, all the agency's developments for the elderly and the disabled have air-conditioned community rooms. Residents are responsible for buying their own window units. Jordan said the agency doesn't track how many residents have air conditioners, but said the vast majority do. Brown, who lives the Franklin Fields complex, said some of his neighbors do not have air conditioning . Lawrence Brown's window unit. David L Ryan/ Globe Staff 'Some people are suffering,' said Brown, wiping his forehead with a t-shirt as he sat in a nearby park, the day before his unit was installed. Brown said he could not afford to buy his own air conditioner and that he has dealt with high temperatures by taking four or five showers a day, staying with his girlfriend in her air-conditioned apartment, and wading in the ocean near Savin Hill Park. Brown, who has COPD, uses his inhaler more often in extreme heat. 'There are times when I feel like I'm suffocating,' he said. 'I can't breathe, so I would try to come outside where maybe there was a cool breeze or something.' At the Boston Housing Authority's Heritage development in East Boston, many of the elderly and disabled residents cannot afford air conditioning units, said Adam Amodeo, whose 68-year-old uncle lives there. 'It boils down to how much money you have,' he said. Advertisement Affordability is a key aspect of Adamkiewicz's study. Those who get their units this year and live in private housing will receive a $100 subsidy for electricity; next summer there will be no subsidy. Public housing residents don't pay for their own electricity. Researchers plan to compare air conditioner use among the different groups to see if the cost of electricity is an obstacle, or whether the cost and difficult installation is the main problem. 'We're trying to build the knowledge base so we could do something bigger going forward,' Adamkiewicz said. On July 17, Brown became one of the lucky residents to receive a window air conditioning unit in his apartment But 40 other vulnerable residents will have lost the chance to join the study. On Monday, another hot, humid day, Brown was asked how he was doing in his newly outfitted apartment. 'Are you kidding me?' he replied. 'I am in Disney Land.' Globe correspondent Jade Lozada contributed reporting. Liz Kowalczyk can be reached at
Boston Globe
24-07-2025
- Boston Globe
How a researcher from Medfield created the go-to database of federal research cuts
Advertisement 'There was a lot of grief in that, because I know what's been lost,' Delaney said of seeing the status in black and white. 'The crazy thing is that there are thousands of grants in Grant Watch, and every single one of them entails loss somewhere.' Related : For five months, Grant Watch has provided a singularly detailed account of the devastation within American scientific research, as its biggest funder, the US government, has morphed into an unrelenting adversary. The website is a near-complete list of grants Advertisement Maintained by seven volunteers, the database is searchable by grant status (frozen, terminated, possibly reinstated), university affiliation, or key details, such as a project's title or award number. The people behind the project scrape government websites and review submissions from scientists to add entries. A researcher examined samples on the campus of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health on June 11. Kent Dayton/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Crowdsourced and consistently accurate, Grant Witness has become a go-to tool for journalists, lawyers, congressional staff, and even some universities themselves, counting the money no longer flowing to their coffers. Root around the website, and you'll find money axed for Related : A tiny slice of those funds went to Delaney, an affable lawyer-turned-epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He received a He coaches his kids' soccer, picks them up from summer camp, and frequents the Blue Moon Bagel Cafe on Main Street, where most midday patrons are twice his age. Advertisement On a muggy July day, Delaney entered the spot in neon orange HOKA shoes and ordered a double-shot cappuccino, before recounting the story of Grant Witness from day one. When NIH money started to disappear in February, the initiative started as a perfunctory Google spreadsheet to keep tabs on what projects were cut, and why. Then Harvard epidemiology professor Brittany Charlton connected Delaney to Noam Ross, executive director of the science data tracker Delaney in his office at his Medfield home. Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff 'This started as, 'Is this something we can find out beyond people's social media posts essentially?'' said Ross, a Brooklyn, New York resident. 'Everyone had complementary initiatives going on.' Now Delaney and his colleagues share weekly Wednesday meetings, early morning Signal messages, and midnight coding sessions to keep up with the latest in research news between their day jobs in data science, biotechnology, and academia. They won a small grant in June to pay a part-time staffer and are searching for additional private investment. In the meantime, volunteers across states are compensated in goodwill for creating a research archive that meets the moment, amid obligations to kids and jobs and grocery runs, said Anthony Barente, a Boston-based data scientist among the group's volunteers. 'My brain is set up to be a data hoarder. When I started this project, I didn't realize what the data would be used for, and I didn't really care,' he said. 'It's all a record for people to take forward, because none of us have been able to fully elucidate how science is changing right now.' Related : Advertisement And Grant Witness's to-do list keeps growing: Checking for more lost grants. Monitoring whether reinstated research projects actually receive their next checks. Adding canceled Environmental Protection Agency grants to the site. And automating features of the website to reduce the need for manual updates. Then there are all the media interviews and endless calls from fearful scientists phoning Delaney to help, vent, or puzzle through what comes next. He once talked about the project as something that would last days or weeks. Now it's years. 'There wasn't an exit strategy at the beginning. There still isn't,' Delaney said. 'We're in this until the end.' But that 'end' feels only more and more amorphous. The shock-and-awe announcements of big funding cuts have waned, but academics are girding for a future of smaller federal investments in all kinds of science. Researchers today scarcely know who to call at grant-making agencies anymore, and even those whose funding remains intact worry about whether the money will flow as planned. Related : The negotiation between Harvard and the White House is a toss-up, too. It could lead to research dollars being returned to campus scientists — 'My best case scenario,' Delaney said — or push President Trump to make good on threats to international student visas and The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where Delaney works, in Boston. SOPHIE PARK/NYT To Delaney, much of the utility of his database is in providing ammunition for lawsuits to defend research funding. He started his career as an attorney at a big firm. After a recession-era layoff, he hopped between countries to train lawyers advocating for former child soldiers in Burundi and work as a public defender in Palau. Eventually, a stint living with employees of the global health nonprofit Partners in Health inspired Delaney to pursue epidemiology. He got his masters in public health in Baltimore, before moving to Massachusetts for his doctorate at Harvard. Advertisement Now, as universities battle the White House in court, Grant Witness is referenced in lawsuits about NIH dollars, NSF funding, and another that relates to the Trump administration's actions against Harvard. A complaint in court is a tangible vehicle for hope, Delaney said, but he still struggles to dodge cynicism every day. A child of the 1980s, Delaney often thinks about how much money has been unwound for AIDS and HIV research. He's horrified to see grants cut for suicide prevention efforts for transgender children. Funding revocations for research projects led by women and people of color make Delaney question why the background of a scientist has any impact on the credibility of their science. It moved him to seriously heed warnings about the country shifting, away from democracy towards authoritarianism. 'The people pointing to the most extreme possible consequences are oftentimes dismissed,' he said. But 'when the most extreme versions of terrible things start happening, we should probably start listening to those that are warning us.' As for Delaney personally, the options are dizzying. He made peace with the fact that he will likely no longer work at Harvard by Halloween and may leave epidemiology entirely — though he won't depart Grant Witness. Delaney not-so-silently hopes that universities stand their ground against threats to their academic freedom and research enterprise. But he hopes they survive either way. Advertisement 'We've come to appreciate that the fight is bigger than we thought it was,' Delaney said. 'Or maybe I didn't have a thought at all about how big the fight was. It's just that it's a damn big fight.' Diti Kohli can be reached at
New York Post
23-07-2025
- New York Post
Higher cancer rates linked to WWII waste in Midwestern creek
A Missouri creek has allegedly led to a higher risk of cancer in neighboring residents. Coldwater Creek, a Missouri River tributary north of St. Louis, has been a known radioactive waste site since the 1980s. Researchers have now confirmed that exposure to the creek, which is said to be polluted with nuclear waste from the development of the first atomic bomb, has led to an increased incidence of cancer for people who were children in the area between the 1940s and 1960s. A study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which was published in JAMA Network, analyzed the data of 4,209 participants who lived near Coldwater Creek. The data was originally gathered for a previous study on childhood radiation exposure. Participants who lived in the Greater St. Louis area between 1958 and 1972 shared their cancer diagnoses, which allowed researchers to calculate risk based on their proximity to the creek. 4 Researchers have now confirmed that exposure to the Coldwater Creek has led to an increased incidence of cancer for children in the area between the 1940s and 1960s, due to nuclear waste. AP The researchers found an elevated risk of cancer in a long-term follow-up, with those who lived closest to the creek reporting a higher incidence of most cancers. 'The waste from these entities could have huge impacts on people's health, even at lower levels of exposure.' In total, 24% of study participants reported having cancer. Of those, 30% lived less than one kilometer away from the creek, 28% lived between one and five kilometers away, 25% lived between five and 20 kilometers away, and 24% lived more than 20 kilometers away. 4 Susie Gaffney poses for a photo along Coldwater Creek near where she used to live Friday, April 7, 2023. AP 4 24% of study participants reported having cancer, and 30% of that percentage lived less than one kilometer away from the creek. REUTERS Corresponding author Marc Weisskopf, professor of environmental epidemiology and physiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, commented on these findings in a press release. 'Our research indicates that the communities around North St. Louis appear to have had excess cancer from exposure to the contaminated Coldwater Creek,' he said. 'These findings may have broader implications — as countries think about increasing nuclear power and developing more nuclear weapons, the waste from these entities could have huge impacts on people's health, even at these lower levels of exposure.' This study accompanies Congress' passing of an expanded version of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), as part of President Trump's Big Beautiful Bill. The act will allow Americans, including Coldwater Creek residents, to receive compensation for medical bills associated with radiation exposure, the researchers noted. 4 This study accompanies Congress' passing of an expanded version of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which would allow Americans to receive compensation for medical bills associated with radiation exposure. AP Local agencies have become increasingly concerned about cancer prevalence in the area, prompting the push for further research beyond the U.S. government's acknowledgment of the pollution four decades ago. The contamination originally occurred due to the Manhattan Project and Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, which processed and refined uranium in St. Louis, according to the study. The radioactive material was moved out of the major U.S. city and into the more rural area near Coldwater Creek, where it was stored in uncovered drums on the ground and exposed to the elements, allowing contaminants to leach into the nearby creek. The researchers noted that communities downstream from Coldwater Creek had potentially been exposed to the ionizing radiation during recreational activities, such as playing in the creek, and residential activities, like breathing in dust suspended from the soil when gardening. The study did have some limitations, the researchers acknowledged, including its small sample size and reliance on self-reported cancer outcomes. The potential carcinogenic impact of creek exposure warrants further research to confirm the findings, the team concluded. Co-author Michael Leung, PhD, post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard's Department of Environmental Health, reflected on the findings in an interview with Fox News Digital. 'Our study found that children in the 1940s to 1960s who lived near Coldwater Creek, which was contaminated by radioactive waste from the development of the first atomic bomb, had a 44% higher risk of cancer compared to those living further than 20 kilometers away,' he confirmed. 'Our findings coincide with Congress passing an expanded version of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, and gives further credence to the health concerns of St. Louis area-residents about the contaminated creek,' Leung went on. 'We hope these findings will support public health measures for affected communities, as well as ongoing efforts to remediate the creek.'
