Malaria is a major problem globally with many deaths every year. The disease is often caused by the parasite Plasmodium falciparum and it is spread by mosquitoes. Resistance against medications used is an increasing problem. If we can understand how immunity against malaria is formed, we can make a vaccine. You need to have malaria many times (and survive every time!) before immunity against the disease is reached. We have developed a new method to measure malaria-specific B-cells directly in peripheral blood, using flow cytometry, and we found that many of the B-cells are atypical which could help in explaining why it takes so long to become immune against malaria. To find out more about this, we also have ongoing studies of patients with malaria both in Sweden and in Uganda. We also have projects to investigate how the parasite can enter red blood cells, and which antibodies that are functional enough to stop this process.

Babesia is a parasite that looks almost like malaria in the microscope, but it is spread in Sweden by ticks. Babesia causes a disease with fever that can become life threatening for example in immunosuppressed individuals or in those lacking a spleen, and it is probably underdiagnosed in Sweden. We have shown that many of those that have antibodies against Borrelia also have antibodies agaisnt Babesia, which shows that a lot more than thought before have been exposed to the parasite.The same disease occurs in deer and cattle. It can also spread via blood transfusions. In our laboratory we culture Babesia parasites and investigate how they get into red blood cells and we have also created a new method to measure antibodies against Babesia. We are also investigating how Babesia parasites can get into red blood cells.

In the group there is two PhD students, one post-doc and two research engineers.