Carnegie Mellon University
January 13, 2014

News Brief: Researchers Develop New Model To Study How Human Immune System Fights Malaria

Contact: Jocelyn Duffy / 412-268-9982 / jhduffy@andrew.cmu.edu

PITTSBURGH—An international group of researchers, including Carnegie Mellon University President Subra Suresh, has developed a new model for studying how the human immune system fights malarial infection. The World Health Organization estimates that in 2012 there were 207 million cases of malaria and 627,000 deaths from the disease.
 
Led by an MIT team, the researchers created a strain of mice with an immune system that mimics many features of the human immune system and can be infected with the most common form of the malaria parasite. The research team's discovery could greatly accelerate the understanding of malaria and advance the development of new drugs and vaccines to combat infection.

The research by Suresh and colleagues from MIT and the Nanyang Technology Institute in Singapore is published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
 
To learn more: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2014/how-the-immune-system-fights-off-malaria-0113.html

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