Humanizing malaria mice

U.S. researchers have developed the first mouse model that recapitulates the human stages of the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum life cycle in one animal.¹ The academics plan to make additional modifications to the mice to improve their utility, but pharmas already want to use the animals in early stage research.

The life cycle of P. falciparum has three distinct stages. The liver and blood stages occur in the host, whereas the sexual stage occurs in the mosquito gut...