It has the sound of a Hollywood movie – including mutants and deadly parasites that develop an alarming resistance to traditional means of containment, threatening to overtake populations on two continents. But this is no summer popcorn flick. It’s how malaria is actually spreading in Africa and many parts of Southeast Asia. The mosquito-driven disease has grown increasingly tolerant to traditional drug treatment, with potentially devastating consequences, particularly to children. Enter two USF Health researchers: distinguished USF professor John Adams, PhD, director of the USF Genomics Program and co-director of the Center for Global Health and Inter-Disciplinary Research; and a member of his lab, clinical scientist Caroline Simmons, PhD – newly anointed with her medical sciences doctorate in the areas of genomics, drug resistance and infectious diseases. She served as lead author and Dr. Adams as senior author, along with nine other USF Health researchers, in a recently published study analyzing novel factors that can alter a malaria parasite’s response to drugs – particularly significant given the parasite’s increasing drug resistance, leading to treatment failure. The importance of their work is even more clear now, following the diagnosis this summer of seven Florida residents infected with malaria that was transmitted by mosquitoes in Florida, as well as another case in Texas.
These are the first locally transmitted cases of malaria infection in the U.S. in 20 years. Dr. Simmons was a fifth-grader when Dr. Adams published his first study on a new tool for forward genetics research in malaria in 2005 – two years prior to joining the USF College of Public Health’s Infectious Research Program. He had worked the previous 16 years at the University of Notre Dame, building on his training in basic parasitology and molecular approaches to malaria at the National Institutes of Health. “I joined the Morsani College of Medicine PhD program and had the chance to rotate between three labs,” said Dr. Simmons, who earned her undergraduate degree in Microbiology and masters in Medical Sciences from USF as well.