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Michal Fried, Ph.D.

		Assistant Member Seattle Biomedical Research Institute Affiliate Associate Professor Department of Pathobiology University of Washington Email: michal.fried@sbri.org Disease under study: Malaria

Mission
Dr. Fried and her colleagues study the development of vaccines against malaria and work to identify disease biomarkers.

Research
Together with the laboratory of Dr. Patrick Duffy, Dr. Fried’s lab made the seminal finding that pregnant women are infected by parasites that bind to the placental receptor chondriotin sulfate A, and antibodies that inhibit parasite adhesion to chondroin sulfate A confer protection. These studies form the basis of the current effort to develop a pregnancy malaria vaccine.

About half of the women with placental malaria (PM) do not have parasites detected in peripheral blood smears. PM is associated with poor outcomes for both the mother and her baby, commonly in the form of maternal anemia and low birth weight deliveries. Biomarkers for malaria disease and immunity do not exist for most malaria syndromes. Biomarkers of infection in pregnant women are required to evaluate the efficacy of interventions such as vaccines and chemotherapy. One of the differences between malaria infection in non-immune and immune women is in the parasite density in the placenta. High parasite densities commonly occur in placentas from non-immune women, as well as inflammatory immune responses, including massive inflammatory infiltrates in the placenta. Using a combination of host and pathogen biomarkers may allow us to detect infection or to predict poor outcomes. Proteomics tools are used to compare plasma proteome profiles between protected and unprotected women to identify disease biomarkers.

Themes
     *  Parasite adhesion
     *  Pregnancy malaria vaccines
     *  Malaria biomarkers

Collaborations
     *  Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
     *  MOMS Project, Morogoro, Tanzania  
     *  Sokoine University, Morogoro, Tanzania 

Dr. Fried’s research is currently supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Grand Challenges for Global Health.

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