Project-002

The Asia-Pacific region is facing serious emerging threats to malaria control and elimination goals, and some have already led to documented increases in malaria case numbers in recent years. Most importantly, substandard and poorly understood vector control products have diminished the impact of the national vector control program in PNG, the region's most important malaria arena. Critical threats also include the emerging pyrethroid resistance detected in our PNG ICEMR sites, the expected vector range expansions due to the accelerating impacts of climate change and the overarching challenge of addressing an increasing proportion of P. vivax malaria. While Cambodia is currently progressing towards elimination as a result of deforestation and effective implementation of malaria control strategies against P. falciparum, malaria elimination success in the Asia-Pacific region will be decided in PNG where anthropogenic landscape transformation is still in the early stages, and by the ability to control P. vivax. Addressing these threats will require robust new vector surveillance approaches to map the spread of insecticide resistance and trace vector range expansion into highly vulnerable populations due to climate change. The context-specific performance of vector-control tools such as long-lasting insecticidal nets, will need to be robustly evaluated to inform national vector control strategies and procurement policies. New transmission-blocking interventions including new vector control approaches and transmission blocking vaccines will be needed to effectively limit the spread of P. vivax. Learning experiences from countries further along the pathway to elimination such as Cambodia will be needed to guide vector control strategy and policy in countries that are less advanced such as PNG. The overall aim of the Asia-Pacific ICEMR Transmission Project is therefore to generate critical evidence to improve malaria vector surveillance and malaria prevention through vector control, with a specific focus on pyrethroid resistance, substandard bed net products and environmental changes driving P. vivax transmission. To achieve this, novel integrated vector surveillance strategies will be developed and piloted in our ICEMR sites to understand the spread and impact of emerging pyrethroid resistance and accelerating climate change-related vector range expansion using cutting-edge vector population genomics tools (Diagnostics and Surveillance Core). We will use the world-leading vector control tool evaluation capacity in our ICEMR sites linked to spatially explicit transmission modelling (Data, Biostatistics and Modelling Core) to rank LLIN products by product and context-specific cost-effectiveness enabling national malaria control programs to select the best possible products. We will provide critical support to accelerate the development of novel transmission-blocking drug and vaccine candidates by providing access to globally unique, multi-country P. vivax human-to-mosquito transmission study capacity in our ICEMR sites. Project Number: 3U19AI129392-10S3 | Fiscal Year: 2025 | NIH Institute/Center: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) | Principal Investigator: Ivo Mueller (+1 co-PI) | Institution: WALTER AND ELIZA HALL INST MEDICAL RES | Award Amount: $42,210 | Activity Code: U19 | Study Section: ZAI1-CAB-M(J1) View on NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/3U19AI12939210S3