"A century of research has not produced a clear understanding of how malaria kills, or more importantly how to stop it killing – we are working to change this."

Prof Kath Maitland is based full-time in East Africa. She leads a portfolio of work which includes pivotal clinical trials of supportive care strategies for African children with severe malaria and other life-threatening infections. These clinical trials have not only changed clinical practice, but also challenged fundamental understanding of the effects of common medical practices. Dr Aubrey Cunnington leads a programme of work trying to better understand the host-pathogen interactions causing severe malaria in humans and to identify novel treatments which could be used alongside antimalarial drugs. He has collaborations in West Africa, including The Gambia and Ghana. Professor Tom Williams has worked for over 20 years to identify the genes involved in susceptibility and protection from malaria, to describe the ways in which they affect the risk of human malaria, and to try to understand their mechanisms of action. He is part of the MalariaGEN and INDEPTH networks.

Researchers