Tonight, I found the “Mobile Malaria Project” session from London Calling 2019. Jason Hendry from the University of Oxford in the UK presented their malaria work. Fifty percent of the population was at risk in 2017! In 2008, resistance to artemisinin was found in Cambodia. In 2014, resistance spread across Southeast Asia. Chloroquine was the frontline drug, and in 1957, resistance emerged. By 1982, it spread across the African continent. In 2014, molecular markers of artemisinin resistance were described. The research team applied for the Land Rover Bursary grant to convert a Land Rover into a mobile sequencing lab to perform surveillance of drug resistance and raise awareness. The core of the proposal had the MinION. The team had a workflow using the QIAGEN QIAamp DNA Investigator kit, whole genome amplification, PCR of antimalarial genes, barcode with EXP-NBD104/114, and sequence via ligation kit SQK-LSK109. The selective amplification enhances parasite detection.
