PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

NTU scientists discover potential vaccine for malaria

2013-12-16
(Press-News.org) Contact information: Lester Kok
lesterkok@ntu.edu.sg
65-679-06804
Nanyang Technological University
NTU scientists discover potential vaccine for malaria

Scientists from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have discovered a key process during the invasion of the blood cell by the Malaria parasite, and more importantly, found a way to block this invasion.

With this new knowledge, NTU is looking to collaborate with the industry on a vaccine against Malaria which can be developed within the next five years if accelerated by vaccine development companies, says lead scientist Professor Peter Preiser.

Prof Preiser, Chair of NTU's School of Biological Sciences, said his team's scientific breakthrough, which was published last month in the top scientific journal Nature Communications, will be instrumental in paving the way towards eradicating Malaria in the long run.

According to the World Health Organisation, about 3.3 billion people – half of the world's population – are at risk of Malaria. This mosquito-borne disease causes fever and headache and in serious cases, can cause a patient to go into a coma or result in death. The disease infected about 219 million people in 2010, and kills around 860,000 people worldwide annually.

If there can be a low-cost vaccine which is effective in rendering the parasite harmless, then millions of lives can be saved and this will also benefit the economy by millions of dollars each year, says Prof Preiser.

"What we have identified is a region of the Malaria parasite which it uses to attach to a healthy blood cell then pushes itself into the cell," says the parasitic diseases expert.

"To prevent this invasion, we developed antibodies which can interfere with this invasion process.

So imagine the parasite has the key to unlock a door to the red blood cell, but we muck the key up, so no matter how hard the parasite tries, the door just refuses to open."

The patented discovery also opens the doors to new drug targets, which will allow scientists to develop more methods to interfere and disrupt the parasite's act of invasion.

Prof Preiser's research team of six from NTU's School of Biological Sciences includes a post-doctoral researcher, three doctoral students and one undergraduate student.

They spent five years on this study. This research outcome was made possible with the development of a new screening assay that allows the rapid characterization of parasite signalling, which is significantly faster than conventional methods.

The newly invented technique utilises a high-throughput fluorescence scanning approach – if antibodies or drugs fail to prevent the invasion of the red blood cell by the malaria parasites, the sample will light up. If the antibodies work, then the sample remains dark. This allows for rapid characterisation of thousands of compounds as well as antibodies for their ability to interfere with the invasion process.

The discovery is an important contribution to the University's research effort in Future Healthcare, which is one of NTU's Five Peaks of Excellence – interdisciplinary research areas in which the university aims to make a global mark. The other four peaks include Sustainable Earth, New Media, the East-West knowledge hub and Innovation.

Besides ground-breaking research, NTU has had remarkable success translating its research into innovative applications. Most recently ranked 41st globally by higher education information provider Quacquarelli Symonds, NTU was also ranked No. 1 in the world for industry income and innovation by Times Higher Education.

Moving forward, the NTU team will be using their new technique to identify other antibodies which can target the different components of the Malaria parasite, and potentially lead to future treatment and vaccine breakthroughs for the fatal Malaria disease. They are also looking to collaborate with industry partners to develop new vaccines based on their latest discoveries.



INFORMATION:

Media contact:

Lester Kok
Senior Assistant Manager
Corporate Communications Office
Nanyang Technological University
Tel: 6790 6804
Email: lesterkok@ntu.edu.sg

About Nanyang Technological University

A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has 33,500 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the colleges of Engineering, Business, Science, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, and its Interdisciplinary Graduate School. It has a new medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, set up jointly with Imperial College London.

NTU is also home to world-class autonomous institutes – the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering – and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI), Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N) and the Institute on Asian Consumer Insight (ACI).

A fast-growing university with an international outlook, NTU is putting its global stamp on Five Peaks of Excellence: Sustainable Earth, Future Healthcare, New Media, New Silk Road, and Innovation Asia.

Besides the main Yunnan Garden campus, NTU also has a satellite campus in Singapore's science and tech hub, one-north, and a third campus in Novena, Singapore's medical district.

For more information, visit http://www.ntu.edu.sg



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Alzheimer substance may be the nanomaterial of tomorrow

2013-12-16
Alzheimer substance may be the nanomaterial of tomorrow Amyloid protein causes diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. But amyloid also carries unique characteristics that may lead to the development of new composite ...

Nanoparticles and their orbital positions

2013-12-16
Nanoparticles and their orbital positions Physicists have developed a "planet-satellite model" to precisely connect and arrange nanoparticles in three-dimensional structures. Inspired by the photosystems of plants and algae, these artificial nanoassemblies ...

VTT: Biorefinery business could put the South Australian forest industry back on the growth track

2013-12-16
VTT: Biorefinery business could put the South Australian forest industry back on the growth track VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, at the request of the South Australian State Government, studied the condition of the forest sector ...

Brain waves encode information as time signals

2013-12-16
Brain waves encode information as time signals How information is processed and encoded in the brain is a central question in neuroscience, as it is essential for high cognitive function such as learning and memory. Theta-gamma ...

Nanofriction on the tip of the microscope

2013-12-16
Nanofriction on the tip of the microscope A new research paper from SISSA published in Nature Materials Atomic force microscopes are able to reproduce spectacular images, at the scale of single atoms. This is made possible by the ...

Families urged to get to the heart of their medical histories this Christmas

2013-12-16
Families urged to get to the heart of their medical histories this Christmas Doctors are encouraging people to take advantage of Christmas gatherings with relatives to discuss family medical histories to help tackle ill-health. The call from clinical ...

Golden trap: Highly sensitive system to detect individual molecules

2013-12-16
Golden trap: Highly sensitive system to detect individual molecules Medical diagnostics is searching for substances capable of documenting early on whether a serious disease is developing or what its course will be. In many cases, the treacherous ...

Ultrafast heating of water -- This pot boils faster than you can watch it

2013-12-16
Ultrafast heating of water -- This pot boils faster than you can watch it Novel method opens new paths for experiments with heated samples of biological relevance Scientists from the Hamburg Center for Free-Electron Laser Science have devised a novel ...

New classification system to improve scheduling of emergency surgery highlighted in BJS issue

2013-12-16
New classification system to improve scheduling of emergency surgery highlighted in BJS issue Researchers in Finland have implemented a classification system for emergency operations that allows for a fair and efficient way to manage a large volume of such surgery. The system ...

A Terahertz generator with the highest signal quality

2013-12-16
A Terahertz generator with the highest signal quality This news release is available in Spanish. Terahertz waves (THz) are found on the furthest extreme of the infrared band, just before the beginning of the microwave band. "This area is possibly the last range of the electromagnetic ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Pink skies

Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research

Key differences between visual- and memory-led Alzheimer’s discovered

% weight loss targets in obesity management – is this the wrong objective?

An app can change how you see yourself at work

NYC speed cameras take six months to change driver behavior, effects vary by neighborhood, new study reveals

New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Novel genes linked to rare childhood diarrhea

New computer model reveals how Bronze Age Scandinavians could have crossed the sea

Novel point-of-care technology delivers accurate HIV results in minutes

Researchers reveal key brain differences to explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others

Study finds nearly five-fold increase in hospitalizations for common cause of stroke

Study reveals how alcohol abuse damages cognition

Medicinal cannabis is linked to long-term benefits in health-related quality of life

Microplastics detected in cat placentas and fetuses during early pregnancy

Ancient amphibians as big as alligators died in mass mortality event in Triassic Wyoming

Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly

Alcohol makes male flies sexy

TB patients globally often incur "catastrophic costs" of up to $11,329 USD, despite many countries offering free treatment, with predominant drivers of cost being hospitalization and loss of income

Study links teen girls’ screen time to sleep disruptions and depression

Scientists unveil starfish-inspired wearable tech for heart monitoring

Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for giant Jurassic dinosaurs

AI effectively predicts dementia risk in American Indian/Alaska Native elders

First guideline on newborn screening for cystic fibrosis calls for changes in practice to improve outcomes

Existing international law can help secure peace and security in outer space, study shows

Pinning down the process of West Nile virus transmission

UTA-backed research tackles health challenges across ages

In pancreatic cancer, a race against time

Targeting FGFR2 may prevent or delay some KRAS-mutated pancreatic cancers

[Press-News.org] NTU scientists discover potential vaccine for malaria