Jessica Lin
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Microbiology & Immunology
Malaria is caused by single-celled Plasmodium parasites that mosquitoes carry between people. Two problems keep it from being eliminated: some species hide dormant in the liver and return months later, and the parasites that cause the deadliest form are evolving resistance to the drugs used against them.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
malaria
Plasmodium vivax
Plasmodium falciparum
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jan 2028
What they work on
- Test whether primaquine failures in a Thai Plasmodium vivax relapse trial were driven by a high burden of hypnozoites, dormant liver-stage parasites, using molecular inversion probe sequencing to detect circulating variants and gauge infection complexity.
- Reconstruct parasite haplotypes and measure identity-by-descent across multiclonal Plasmodium vivax infections with the Tapestry bioinformatic tool, then integrate relatedness, genetic complexity and clinical factors in Bayesian models to classify recurrences as relapse or reinfection.
- Determine in a Cambodian military cohort whether infections rebounding after monthly prophylaxis with dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine and weekly primaquine are relapses, and reclassify recurrences in soldiers wearing permethrin-treated uniforms to recalibrate vector-prevention efficacy.
- Measure the risk of mosquito transmission from PCR-positive individuals three to eight weeks after artemisinin-based combination therapy, using membrane feeding assays with Anopheles gambiae and Anopheles funestus in over 300 triple-ACT trial participants in Bagamoyo, Tanzania.
- Sequence parasites reaching the salivary gland sporozoite stage in fed mosquitoes and compare kelch 13 and mdr1 drug-resistance allele frequencies against pre- and post-treatment blood to test whether treatment-selected resistance is maintained through transmission.
More about the research
Both problems share a technical obstacle, which is that a blood test showing parasites after treatment does not tell you where they came from or whether they can spread. Work here uses genetic sequencing of parasites, mosquito feeding experiments and samples from clinical trials and cohorts in Southeast Asia and East Africa to tell apart the possible origins of a recurrent infection and to measure whether those recurrences actually transmit.
Why it matters
Both projects address why malaria interventions fail in ways that current tests cannot see. Better molecular classification of Plasmodium vivax recurrences could let trials judge anti-relapse drugs like primaquine and tafenoquine, and vector-prevention measures such as insecticide-treated uniforms, on fair terms. Measuring transmission from low-level infections after artemisinin-based combination therapy could identify a window for intervening against the spread of drug-resistant Plasmodium falciparum in high-burden countries such as Tanzania, where 4% of the world's malaria deaths occur.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Cristian Koepfli
University of Notre Dame, IN·Public Health & Epidemiology
Sequence more than 1,000 Plasmodium falciparum and more than 800 Plasmodium vivax samples collected since 2019 in the Ethiopian highlands to distinguish imported from locally transmitted infections and test whether imported parasites spread locally.
Jonathan Juliano
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Build a temporal deep learning surrogate, a neural network trained on simulation output, to predict how antimalarial drug policy changes would alter resistance and transmission in Kinshasa Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Robert McCann
University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Measure how readily the two main Malawian malaria mosquitoes, Anopheles funestus and Anopheles arabiensis, become infected with Plasmodium falciparum, using membrane feeding assays with field-collected mosquitoes.
The school
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 523 research doctorates a year.
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