The project is one among the 30 awarded projects, from more than 600 presented proposals in the 2021 call.
The project led by Dr. del Portillo focuses on an infectious disease affecting around 15 million people. We are talking about malaria caused by Plasmodium vivax, which is the most widely distributed type of malaria around the world. Even though it is considered less lethal as the one caused by P. falciparum, malaria vivax represents a great public health issue and can cause a serious illness and death. Some people develop serious forms of the disease even though they have low blood levels of the parasite.
The project will develop a miniaturized model of the human bone marrow and spleen (organ-on-a-chip technology) to investigate how malaria parasites “hide” in these hemopoietic organs, with a special focus on the role of EVs as intercellular communicators facilitating such cryptic infections.
This interdisciplinary, multi-Centric project will be carried out in collaboration with the Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, i3S (Portugal), the University of Barcelona (Spain), and Mahidol University (Thailand).
For further information, please follow the links:
https://fundacionlacaixa.org/es/convocatoria-caixaresearch-investigacion-salud-2021-proyecto-malaria
https://blog.caixaresearch.org/resolucion-convocatoria-caixaresearch-investigacion-en-salut-2021