(Invited) Global Malaria Endemic and the Industrial Physics Challenge of Cost-Effective Nanoparticle Quantification

Malaria counts among the worst scourges of humankind, accounting for some 500 million clinical cases per year and more than one million deaths. Approximately half the world’s population lives in regions where malaria is endemic, amounting to an immense health burden and inhibiting economic prosperity in numerous countries. Currently, there is no point-of-care (POC) diagnostic test that meets the need of highly-sensitive malaria screening tool for low-resource settings. To address this global challenge, through funds from the NIH, we are developing a portable device for quantifying hemozoin in blood; a dichroic paramagnetic nanoparticle that is a byproduct of hemoglobin digestion by all malaria parasites. Hemozoin is an attractive target for developing drugs and is released into circulation during red blood cell lysis. It has been shown that parasitemia is proportional to hemozoin concentration in blood. While it has been shown that by exploiting the unique magnetic and optical anisotropy properties of hemozoin, as few as 30 malaria parasites per mL of blood could be identified. However, this process requires complex instrumentation and is not conducive for a cost effective, rugged, mobile, POC diagnostic system. In this presentation, we will discuss the challenge, how we are approaching it through a multi-science approach that includes physicists, biologists and chemists and our progress to date.