| Malaria is responsible for approximately 2 million deaths annually, mostly African children under the age five, and more than 500 million clinical attacks of malaria take place every year, resulting an enormous public health burden on many of the tropical and subtropical countries. Moreover, the burden keeps increasing because of the spread of drug resistant parasites and insecticide resistant mosquito vectors. Therefore there is an urgent need for the malaria vaccine and new drug discovery. |
| For that, genome sequence of Plasmodium falciparum became available since its completion in 2002, however, conventional recombinant protein expression methods to identify novel vaccine and drug target molecules have been difficult due to its highly AT rich content. |
| To overcome this problem, we employed a cell-free protein expression system prepared from wheat embryos. Proof-of-principle studies demonstrated that several known malaria vaccine candidates were successfully expressed. Therefore, we are now expressing malaria recombinant proteins genomewidely. The wheat germ cell-free protein expression system should lead to high-throughput screening to identify novel vaccine and drug targets. |
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