MALARIA TREATMENT could be revolutionised by a smartphone-sized nanotech diagnostic device that can tell from a drop of blood whether or not a particular treatment is likely to be effective, say its developers. One of the major challenges that malaria poses to science is the disease-causing parasite’s ability to resist treatment. “The malaria parasite seems to be able to evolve,” says Sanjeev Krishna, leader of the Nanomal Consortium led by St. George’s at the University of London, which is developing the diagnostic with a €5.2 million (around US$6.8 million) grant from the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research. There are therefore concerns that current front-line therapies, based on WHO-recommended artemisinin combination therapies, could soon become ineffective. Resistance to artemisinin has emerged in South-East Asia, and there are hints that it may soon emerge in Sub-Saharan Africa. “Even with the earlier drugs that came into use, resistance started to be a problem very soon,” Krishna says. The Nanomal device responds to this problem by not only detecting malaria, but also identifying which of the various forms of the parasite the patient has. “All you need is a finger-prick of blood,” explains Krishna. “The device can diagnose which of the five known types of malaria is affecting the patient. For example, if the malaria is caused by Plasmodium falciparum it is more likely to be drug resistant.” And thanks to a technology called ‘nanowire’, the device is capable of doing much more. “It extracts the [parasite] DNA from the blood and analyses it to tell if a particular drug, say chloroquine, is going to be ineffective. This way, doctors can immediately go for a more effective treatment,” Krishna says. Jonathan O’Halloran, chief scientific officer at QuantuMDx, one of the consortium partners, explains that nanowires are transistors in which the flow of current from one point to another is regulated by a third point called a ‘gate’. Specific DNA markers are associated with certain mutations that cause the malaria pathogen to be resistant to anti-malarial therapies. If the target DNA marker is present in the sample, it will bind to the nanowire and act as a gate, causing changes in the electricity flow that can be measured and recognised by the device. It takes only few minutes to run the test and, once on the market, the device should cost no more than a smartphone, the developers say. “Since it is going to be portable, this could go to villages, hospitals, everywhere you have malaria,” Krishna adds. But the device is still in the prototype stage and the team hopes to test it in the field within a year. Colin Sutherland, a researcher at the Malaria Centre of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who is not involved with the device, says the concept is “very exciting” and could work. “If we had it 20 years ago, we could have saved a lot of lives that were lost because of the resistance to the drug chloroquine,” he says. But Sutherland adds that the platform will need to be made flexible to incorporate newly discovered markers for resistance to new drugs. Krishna is confident the device will be able to do that. “The tool is very responsive to incorporation of new markers as and when they are identified,” he says. “However, there are already many markers that indicate drug resistance in antimalarial combination therapies, so there is plenty to go on as the work continues to fill in missing pieces in a complex jigsaw.” (SciDev)
Women key drivers in climate change adaptation
PLANS TO protect ecosystems and help people adapt to climate change ― also known as ecosystem-based adaptation (EBA) ― must involve vulnerable groups, including women and communities greatly hit by global warming if they are to succeed, according to scientists who met in Tanzania last March. Scientists and policymakers at the UN-led international workshop on EBA in Dar-es-Salaam, also said that more needed to be done to monitor and evaluate the cost-effectiveness of such adaptation, and to learn from past experiences in order to transfer knowledge into action and policy. “Adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change is vital in order to reduce the impacts of climate change that are happening now, and increase resilience to future impacts,” says Richard Kinley, deputy executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which organised the meeting. “Ecosystem-based approaches are part of the solution that countries could use in building resilience to climate change,” he adds. For example, mangroves or forest — rather than artificial sea walls — should be maintained or restored to help protect coastlines. The mangroves can improve water quality and thus increase fish yields, while also protecting fishing communities from future disasters. Shyla Raghav, senior manager for climate adaptation policy at Conservation International, a non-profit environmental organisation, says that the workshop took stock of the science and implementation of EBA around the world, and demonstrated the need for further action to help understand, enable and implement the approach. Raghav calls for systems such as agro-biodiversity, the preservation of seeds and the maintenance of a genetic pool to help make agriculture more resilient. She highlights the importance of involving stakeholders in such measures and adds that women often serve as stewards of nature and ecosystems and are key drivers of adaptation measures. A session on gender and indigenous knowledge at the meeting identified best practices in EBA. These include: engaging stakeholders, especially marginalised groups early on; the inclusion of specific gender and indigenous knowledge in national adaptation planning and implementation stages; and using both indigenous and conventional knowledge to design and implement EBA. Euster Kibona, senior environmental programme officer with the consultancy group Environmental Protection and Management Services, in Dar es Salaam, told the meeting that one of the best practices identified was training women to use donkeys rather than cattle in farming activities in Uganda. Kibona explained that during droughts most of a cattle herd can die, forcing men to migrate with the remaining animals in search of pastures, and leaving drought-resilient donkeys behind. “Training women to use donkeys in farming activities helps them sustain themselves and the ecosystem,” Kibona explained. “In Sub-Saharan Africa, [it is often] women who lack formal education and thus depend much more on the ecosystems for their livelihoods, so we need to look at how ecosystem-based adaptation can help them.” (SciDev)
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