Reflections on a Century of Malaria Biochemistry

Malaria is one of the most common infectious diseases and an enormous public health problem. Each year it causes disease in approximately 650 million people and kills between 1 and 3 million, most of them young children in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This book provides an overview of the research that has been done in malaria biochemistry in the quest to find a cure. It discusses how our understanding has helped us to develop better diagnostics and novel chemotherapies. Researchers will find having all of this information in one volume, annotated with personal reflections from a leader in the field, invaluable given the big push being made on various fronts to use the latest drug discovery tools to attack malaria and other developing country diseases.

* Reviews the past 100 years of malaria biochemistry research providing researchers with an overview of the investigations that have been undertaken in this field
Benefit: Allows researchers to see what progress has been made so that they can use this knowledge when trying to develop the latest drug discovery tools to attack malaria

* Chronicles both biochemical successes and failures
Benefit: Allows researchers to see what has and hasn't work which they can then apply in their own research

1. An Introduction to Malaria Parasites
2. The Early Years
3. Show Me The Money
4. In vivo and in vitro models
a. Life in the Erythrocyte
b. Life Outside the Erythrocyte
c. Life in the Mosquito
5. Malaria Pigment
6. Chloroquine and Hemozoin
7. Isoenzymes
8. The Road to the Plasmodium falciparum Genome
9. Carbohydrate metabolism
a. Glycolysis and the TCA Cycle
b. The Pentose Phosphate Pathway
c. Pyridine nucleotides
d. Carbon dioxide fixation
10. Pyrimidines and the Mitochondrion
11. The Road to Atovaquone
12. The Ring Road to the Apicoplast
13. Ribosomes and Ribosomal RNA Synthesis
14. De Novo Synthesis of Pyrimidines and Folates
15. Salvage of Purines
16. Polyamines
17. New Permeability Pathways and Transport
18. Hemoglobinases
19. Membrane Proteins
20. Trafficking
21. Membrane Lipids
22. Adhesion
a. Adhesion Without Knobs
b. Cerebral Malaria
23. Invasion
24. Vitamins and Antioxidants
25. Shocks and Clocks
26. Transcriptomes, Proteomes and Data Mining
27. Mosquito Interactions