Drug Resistance in the Malaria Parasite: Biology and Epidemiology

Dear Colleagues,

Although malaria case incidence has decreased globally since 2010, thanks to intensified control interventions, such as the deployment of insecticide-treated bed nets, residual indoor spraying, and better access to preventive and curative chemotherapy against the disease, the rate of decline has stalled and even reversed in some regions since 2014. The most recent report by the World Health Organization estimated that in 2016, there were 216 million cases of malaria, an increase of five million cases over the previous year, and 445,000 deaths from the disease globally. In the absence of an effective vaccine, the emergence and spread of insecticide resistance, and current control measures being effective against P. falciparum, but to a lesser extent against P. vivax, early diagnosis and treatment with effective antimalarial drugs is a key component of malaria control programs. However, the emergence and spread of resistant parasites to all antimalarials ever deployed worldwide poses a major threat to the global malaria control and elimination agenda.

In order to detect, contain, and ultimately eliminate multidrug resistant parasites, we need a better understanding of the mechanism of drug resistance in the parasite. Although we have a fairly good understanding of drug resistance mechanisms in P. falciparum, the knowledge about the mechanisms of resistance in non-falciparum Plasmodium species is still elusive.

This Special Issue will focus on the current epidemiology of drug resistant malaria globally and what we know about the mechanisms of drug resistance Plasmodium species that infect humans. Furthermore, it will highlight how this knowledge translates into the development of novel tools for the surveillance of drug resistance on individual and population level, and how this knowledge guides innovative strategies to find novel candidate compounds for the antimalarial drug pipeline.

Dr. Jutta Marfurt
Guest Editor

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