Research to eliminate one of the world’s deadliest diseases – malaria – will be accelerated thanks to a USD $4.7 million grant from the Gates Foundation for scientists at The Kids Research Institute Australia and The University of Western Australia (UWA).
Global malaria cases surged to an estimated 263 million in 2023, with more than 597,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The vast majority – approximately 95 per cent – occurred in Africa, where vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant women are particularly affected.
This investment will advance the pioneering work of The Kids' Global Disease Modelling team, led by inaugural Fiona Stanley Chair in Child Health Research and UWA Professor, Melissa Penny.
For more than eight years, Professor Penny has helped shape global malaria strategies through the WHO, culminating in her appointment last December to its Malaria Policy Advisory Group, which advises directly on policy to the WHO Director-General and Global Malaria Program.
With this grant, Professor Penny and her team will focus on developing two linked programs.
The first will focus on updating the team’s flagship OpenMalaria platform, an open-source mathematical model of malaria dynamics co-developed with Professor Nakul Chitnis (Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Switzerland). The program simulates how Plasmodium falciparum – the parasite that causes malaria – infects people, predicts whether cases will be mild or severe, and estimates how infections spread from individuals to mosquitoes and then through the wider community.
By updating OpenMalaria with the latest data – including how interventions have shifted disease patterns by age and setting over the past 20 years – the team will gain deeper insights into how to better use different existing and novel malaria interventions to support continued malaria reduction and accelerate elimination.
The second program will apply mathematical modelling, including the use of OpenMalaria, to support the development and testing of new malaria interventions – such as vaccines, medications, and long-acting injectable drugs – by predicting their potential to reduce malaria cases and deaths.
“Together, these programs aim to improve decision-making and accelerate progress toward malaria elimination now and in the future,” Professor Penny said.
“Updates to OpenMalaria will help us to understand the potential impact of new drugs, long-acting preventative treatment, and vaccines, even before they enter clinical trials.
“The models will estimate how many lives these new tools might save and in which African settings.
“The models will also help product developers understand how optimising characteristics of the new tools will lead to greater impact, thus supporting research and development decisions along the clinical pathway.”
The Kids Research Institute Australia’s Executive Director Professor Jonathan Carapetis AM said the Gates Foundation grant was a powerful endorsement of both Professor Penny’s leadership in the fight against malaria and the Institute’s commitment to research that changes lives.
“This funding is recognition not only of Melissa and her team’s global impact, but also of the calibre of their international collaborations and the trust placed in their science at the highest level,” Professor Carapetis said.
“At The Kids, our mission is to deliver world-class research that makes a real difference to the health and happiness of children everywhere. Malaria continues to be one of the leading causes of death and illness in children, and this pioneering work is precisely the kind of high-impact research that changes outcomes, saves lives, and shapes the future of child health globally.”
Professor Anna Nowak, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) at UWA, said the grant recognised the pioneering research being driven by Professor Penny and her team.
“They are shaping the way malaria is treated and making life-changing contributions to communities around the world, including some of our most vulnerable groups,” Professor Nowak said.
“The Gates Foundation’s investment will enable the research team to bring together some of the brightest minds and top institutions to help solve one of the world’s biggest health challenges.”
Through the new grant, the Global Disease Modelling team will collaborate with many partners world-wide from academia, industry and policy.