Cell publication for Network WEHI researchers

11 July 2008

Alan Cowman, Ross Coppel, James Beeson and Brendan Crabb and their research teams have published their discovery identifying and disrupting key elements of malaria's "sticky sack" adhesion strategy in the prestigious international journal, Cell.

Once the malaria parasite infects the healthy red blood cells of humans the cells are transformed into "sticky sacks" containing up to 32 new daughter parasites. The hijacked red blood cells stick to blood vessel walls, thereby avoiding being flushed through the spleen and being destroyed there by the body's immune system.

WEHI scientists have identified eight new proteins that transport the parasite's major adhesion factor, PfEMP1, to the surface of infected red cells, where it promotes the formation of sticky knobs. They have shown that the removal of just one of these proteins disrupts the ability of the parasite bag to stick to the blood vessel walls.

WEHI researchers believe that this discovery might lead to new drugs that target the "stickiness factors"; the inability of the parasite to prevent its transport to the human spleen would lead to the parasite's natural destruction. "Exported Proteins Required for Virulence and Rigidity of Plasmodium falciparum-Infected Human Erythrocytes" A. G. Maier et al. Cell, Vol 134, 48-61, 11 July 2008