News

Top award for Durham scientist

(31 October 2003)

The award of a prestigious research grant to disease ecologist Professor Steve Lindsay and his team demonstrates the University of Durham’s growing international reputation in Biomedical Sciences.

Professor Lindsay and his colleagues, Dr Paul Emerson, Dr Ulrike Fillinger and Dr Amy Ratcliffe have been awarded the largest research grant to be received by the School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences from the US National Institute of Health. As a member of a consortium of researchers looking into malaria control in The Gambia, his Durham team received over $2 million.

This Durham-led project is in collaboration with the UK Government’s Medical Research Council’s Laboratories in The Gambia, Valent Biosciences in the USA and the Gambian Government’s Malaria Control Programme.

It was the Durham team’s long track record of successful collaborative research with the MRC Unit in The Gambia that was an important factor for winning this award. The team’s research will now focus on how commercially available larval control agents can be exploited to fight the disease.

Sir Kenneth Calman, Vice-Chancellor of the University, said:

“The University is tremendously proud to have people of world-class quality at the heart of its research community. We congratulate Professor Lindsay on this achievement and wish his team continued success in their vital work”.

Larval control has been historically successful, but has been largely neglected over the last 50 years. Effective control is under threat from drug and insecticide resistance in different parts of the tropics but promising new formulations of larval control agents, Bacillus sphaericus (Bs) and B.thuringiensis var. israelensis (Bti) have recently been shown to give excellent control of the major carriers of malaria in Africa.

Use of these products is better than chemical agents since the new biocides only kill mosquito larvae and do not appear to elicit the evolution of resistance when used together. To date few trials have measured the clinical impact of larviciding with Bs and Bti and those that have, have been hampered by their small scale.

The team proposes to carry out a much larger study to determine whether Bs and Bti products can significantly reduce clinical attacks of malaria in children aged 6 months to 10 years old in villages in The Gambia. The results from this study will make a major contribution to quantifying the importance of the use of these agents in the fight against the killer disease.

Professor Lindsay said:

“This study is the first to measure the impact of Bs and Bti on this scale on malaria morbidity in Africa. These larvicides provide a promising new tool for malaria control and if successful it will make a major contribution to our understanding of the benefits of larval control for malaria reduction in Africa. Only this level of evidence will allow informed decision making by international policy makers of the relative merits of larval control.”.

Research at the Department of Biological and Biomedical Sciences was awarded a prestigious grade 5 in the last Higher Education Funding Council research ratings, which is awarded for research that is predominantly world-class.

Further information about this release or for photographs:

Professor Steve Lindsay, Chair in Disease Ecology, School of Biological & Biomedical Sciences, University of Durham. Tel: 0191-334-1349, e-mail s.w.lindsay@durham.ac.uk, Prof Lindsay's website.

Jan Cawood, Public Relations Officer, University of Durham, Tel: 0191-334-0018