Malaria culture

[3] Initial hopes that the ex vivo culture would lead quickly to the discovery of a vaccine were premature.

The burning candle consumes some of the oxygen and produces carbon dioxide (CO2), which acts as a fire extinguisher.

In the summer of 1976 Milton Friedman, a graduate student in the Trager lab who was working in the MRC laboratories in The Gambia, arranged for a sample of human blood infected with P. falciparum to be sent to New York City.

This was diluted with RPMI 1640 (which turned out to be the best of the commercial media) in Petri dishes, placed in a candlejar and incubated.

Later, other lines would be established using similar methods and the impact of continuous cultivation of P. falciparum was phenomenal especially for the testing of putative antimalarials and for deciphering its genes.

A number of subsequent reports (from as far back as the early 1980s), showed that cell suspension (using a shaking-incubator) significantly increased culture growth.

Magnetic columns have shown to be less harmful for the parasite and are simple and adjustable to the needs of the researcher.