Malaria Crosses Collaboration

Drug resistance evolution is always a major threat to disease control and malaria drug resistance arises to each new frontline antimalarial drug. This NIH Program Project grant (P01) uses targeted genetic crosses to dissect the genetic complexity of artemisinin resistance in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. This novel approach can extend well beyond artemisinin resistance and the malaria community by providing unprecedented insights into how genes control key drug resistance traits, leading to a broad understanding of the evolutionary paths to resistance and suggesting ways by which drug resistance evolution can be blocked.