Unveiling malaria’s ‘cloak of invisibility’

The discovery by researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of a molecule that is key to malaria’s ‘invisibility cloak’ will help to better understand how the parasite causes disease and escapes from the defences mounted by the immune system. The research team has identified one of the crucial molecules that instructs the parasite to employ its invisibility cloak to hide from the immune system, and helps its offspring to remember how to ‘make’ the cloak.

The team unravelled details about the first molecule found to control the genetic expression of PfEMP1. PfEMP1 plays two important roles in malaria infection. It enables the parasite to stick to cells on the internal lining of blood vessels, which prevents the infected cells from being eliminated from the body. It is also responsible for helping the parasite to escape destruction by the immune system, by varying the genetic code of the PfEMP1 protein so that at least some of the parasites will evade detection.

This variation lends the parasite the ‘cloak of invisibility’ which makes it difficult for the immune system to detect parasite-infected cells, and is part of the reason a vaccine has remained elusive.

Prof Alan Cowman, Infection and Immunity Division, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute

Cell Host and Microbe; http://www.wehi.edu.au/site/latest_news/unveiling_malarias_cloak_of_invisibility