Jiping Cheng, left, and Dinesh Agrawal in the microwave lab at Penn State Photo: Penn State University |
With
the support of a Phase II grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, Penn State materials scientists and medical researchers are
working to develop a process to destroy malaria parasites in the blood
using low-power microwaves. Dinesh Agrawal, professor of materials, and
Jiping Cheng, senior research associate in the Penn State Materials
Research Institute, are working with Penn State College of Medicine
researchers and researchers at INDICASAT-AIP, Panama, and at Clarkson
University, N.Y., to test the microwave treatment in vitro and in mice
models.
Malaria
continues to kill nearly a million people worldwide each year, the
large majority of them children under five. Recent reports from Cambodia
suggest that currently effective antimalarial drugs are beginning to
lose their effectiveness as the most virulent malaria strain develops
resistance. The Gates Foundation funds efforts to eradicate the disease
through traditional methods, such as providing mosquito netting and
insecticides, and through innovative ideas, such as those being tried
out at Penn State through a Gates Foundation Grand Challenges
Explorations grant.
“The
first phase successfully demonstrated that the way microwaves heat the
malaria parasite causes it to die without harming normal blood cells,”
says Agrawal, who is director of the Microwave Processing and
Engineering Center and an authority on microwave engineering. “Microwave
interactions are unique. The parasite has extra iron (Fe3+) that
enhances the microwave energy absorption by the parasite. As a result,
it is postulated that the parasite gets heated preferentially and is
killed without affecting the normal blood cells.”
The
team, which is led by associate professor Jose A. Stoute in the Penn
State College of Medicine, applied for the Gates funding two years ago
and received second phase funding of up to $1 million in July 2011. The
first phase tested the microwave
process in a laboratory culture. The second phase will use a larger
system and test the process in mouse models. If those tests are
successful, Agrawal says, the next step will be to design and build a
system to treat human beings. Part of that work will be done at Penn
State and part at Clarkson University. “That could be revolutionary,”
Agrawal says. “A human size device might look like the scanners at the
airport.”