In an effort to accelerate the control of malaria and help eliminate it worldwide, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, announced approximately US$ 14 million in first-year funding to establish 10 new malaria research centres around the world.

The seven-year awards will establish the International Centers of Excellence for Malaria Research (ICEMRs) in regions where malaria is endemic, including parts of Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands and Latin America. These regions include some of the focus countries of the president's Malaria Initiative, an effort that since 2005 has worked to fight malaria in the regions most affected by the disease. Infection by malaria-causing parasites results in approximately 240 million cases around the globe annually, and causes more than 850,000 deaths each year. Teams of scientists involved in the ICEMR program will be conducting research in more than 20 countries.

"One of our primary goals with these centres is to fund cutting-edge research in malaria-endemic areas that will keep up with the rapidly changing epidemiology of the disease," says NIAID director Anthony S Fauci.

Malaria has been eliminated from many parts of the globe, but 40 per cent of the world's population still live in areas where they are at risk for contracting the disease. According to Lee Hall, chief of the Parasitology and International Programmes Branch in NIAID, sustainable and effective malaria control requires research in multiple settings on the complex interactions among the parasite, the mosquito vector, the local ecology and the human host.

"The ICEMR programme seeks to address this need by creating a network of multidisciplinary research centres in malaria-endemic settings," Dr Hall says. "The centres aim to generate critical knowledge, tools and evidence-based strategies to support intervention and control programs by government organizations and health care institutions."

The centres will integrate clinical and field approaches with laboratory-based immunologic, molecular and genomic methods. They will adapt their research to changes in malaria epidemiology and emerging research needs as well as opportunities within the specific regions. Their findings are expected to help inform how new interventions and control strategies are designed and evaluated in the future.