Facility Malaria

Malaria Facility

The Malaria Facility of the Radboudumc represents, for already more than 3 decades, an unique research/production facility for culturing Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasites and breeding and infection ofAnopheles mosquitoes with human and various mice malaria. 
 
Using a state-of-the-artinfrastructure, an experienced core group of technicians the unit produces large quantities of mosquitoes and parasites on a permanent basis. The Anopheles mosquitoes and Plasmodium falciparum parasites are bred and produced for various research goals:
 

• Clinical Trial studies to infect or immunize volunteers in the Controlled Human Malaria Infection model
• Clinical development of attenuated whole sporozoite vaccines and transmission blocking vaccines 
• Research on the transmission from human to mosquito
• Production of infected mosquitoes
• Production of different parasite strains and stages 

The Malaria Facility is located in the Central Animal Facility of the Radboudumc and contains a mosquito breeding lab and parasite culture lab. These labs are safely equipped for housing and breeding different types of strains of parasites and mosquitoes.

The Mosquito laboratory

The mosquito laboratory is a unique facility with four individual climate rooms for breeding mosquito larvae and housing of adult mosquitoes and a BSL3 compliant room. All climate rooms are accommodated with wind sluices to to prevent mosquito escape. Temperature and humidity of all the climate rooms in which mosquitoes are bred and kept are continuously monitored. 

The mosquito laboratory produces over 10.000 mosquitoes per week of which about 20 % are infected with P. falciparum. The laboratory is equipped to dissect up to 2000 malaria infected mosquitoes every week. 

Parasite culturing laboratory

In the parasite culturing laboratory different strains and stages of the parasites are produced for various research goals. Isolation of the parasite will take place by special techniques. 

The parasite lab is equipped with semi-automated culturing systems, i.e. 4 ‘Tippers’, used for infection of mosquitoes and  3 ‘Shakers’ used for large scale production of different parasite stages and for adaption of new parasite isolates. 

Over the years the parasite culture laboratory was able to collected many malaria parasite strains from different regions all over the world. Parasites are isolated using special techniques and to prevent cross‐contamination, different parasite strains are cultured in separate rooms. These strains are used for drugs and vaccine studies and transmission experiments.