What's New
This page presents the news on project progress and is updated on a monthly basis.

Progress Update (October 2008):

Work during the last two years has resulted in the first new technique for diagnosing malaria able to challenge the rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) currently used in the field. This technique uses magneto-optic technology (MOT) to detect haemozoin, a waste product of the malarial parasite, in the blood. Haemozoin crystals are weakly magnetic and have a distinct rectangular form and exhibit optical dichroism, This new technology takes advantage of these properties to give a precise reading of the presence of haemozoin in a small blood sample.

The laboratory instrumentation developed at Exeter has now been reproduced by our partners in Philips in a form suitable for transportation to and testing at a field station in Kenya. It is currently being calibrated and tested at The Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam where after initial teething troubles it is performing beyond expectations.
Samples have been prepared by diluting cultured parasitized red blood cells (PRBCs), as well as clinical samples, with whole fresh blood to mimic freshly extracted malarial blood samples of controlled parasitemia. The results from this latest preclinical trial confirms that 20 PRBCs/ul can easily be detected with evidence that detection as low as 10 PRBCs/ul may also be possible. The measurement time per sample is under a 1 min with sample preparation time approx. 2-3 min rendering this technique faster than current diagnostic method such as RDT (15 min) and microscopy (40-60 min), with respective detection limits of 40-100 and 5-10 PRBCs/ul. Although potentially very sensitive, microscopy requires highly skilled laboratory staff leading to strong variation in quantitative diagnosis.

Press Releases, and Articles
 

Editorial Feature in Analytical Chemistry (Oct.30th 2008) here

Nanoforum poster    

Singapore 2008 Paper     

Recent Guardian Article here

Article in The Hindu here

Paper on latest results published in J Biophys    

Review in Exeter University Staff Magazine, see Page Eleven.

Link to the mp3 recordings of a radio interview carried out by
KIT in the Netherlands (In Dutch)