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People who say that mosquitoes are inexplicably attracted to them might be interested in physicist Stephan Karl’s work.

The PhD candidate took out an award sponsored by Nobel Laureate Barry Marshall’s biotechnology company Ondek Pty Ltd at the recent Australian Society for Medical Research (ASMR) Symposium. The award was given for Stephan’s work on the magnetic properties of malaria-infected cells and how to exploit them for diagnosis and treatment.

The parasitic disease malaria lives in red blood cells and feeds on haemoglobin. Due to various complex biochemical reactions, the malaria-infected cells develop more magnetic properties than uninfected cells.

Stephan’s research focuses on how to purify infected cells via a process called magnetic cell fractionation. While there are commercially-available tools to perform this, Stephan’s work revolves around the development of low-cost tools to achieve the same outcome, as he says the funding available for malaria research is low compared with that available for other illnesses.

“I am proud to have won this award at a post-graduate level,” said Stephan. “I’m all the more happy that I could convince with my presentation, across interdisciplinary boundaries.”

His supervisor, Professor Tim St Pierre, said Stephan had brought knowledge in physics and engineering together with that from biology and medicine to create a new tool that would be useful in one of the world’s biggest public health problems.
“Stephan has developed a low-cost method of detecting a form of the malaria parasite that circulates in the blood stream long after symptoms have disappeared,” said Professor St Pierre.

“This is the form that makes a person infectious to mosquitoes and hence is critical in the transmission of the disease. It has previously been difficult and expensive to detect but Stephan’s method exploits the subtle magnetic properties of the parasite enabling it to be detected using simple equipment.

“His method is likely to be used in malaria eradication campaigns where it will be important to determine whether a given human population is still infectious.”
But please note: If mosquitoes seem to be attracted to you, it does not mean you are carrying malaria!

Article courtesy of UWA News