Malaria

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Description (as provided by the applicant): Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia meeting entitled Malaria, organized by Fidel P. Zavala, Andrew P. Waters, Kevin Marsh and Carolina V. Barillas-Mury. The meeting will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana from January 20 - 25, 2013. Malaria affects hundreds of millions of people and causes nearly 1 million deaths per year. The control and eventual eradication of malaria will require a concerted, multidisciplinary effort to decrease parasite infectivity through vaccines and anti-parasitic drugs, and by preventing transmission to the vertebrate host. In this meeting we will promote discussion of: 1) Innate and adaptive immune responses to Plasmodium infection and how the parasite interferes with these responses. We will also discuss the development of new adjuvants and anti-malaria vaccine strategies. 2) Basic aspects of Plasmodium cellular and population biology that affect infection and the development of drug resistance. 3) Plasmodium transmission, including gametocytogenesis and Plasmodium biology in the mosquito vector. This includes cellular and molecular aspects of parasite-mosquito interactions, field studies, functional genomics and the development of potential control strategies. 4) Severe malaria in endemic areas, recent advances in our understanding of the physiopathology of disease in humans and in animal models, and genome-based strategies to identify biomarkers of susceptibility to severe disease. Since basic and translational malaria research is eminently multidisciplinary, the 2013 Keystone Symposia meeting on Malaria will bring together researchers working in disciplines ranging from basic molecular studies to population biology. This encounter will promote the exchange of ideas to both deepen our understanding of malaria and to develop novel control measures. Furthermore, we anticipate that this meeting will enable us to identify and prioritize the next generation of challenges faced by the field.