MIT scholar fights malaria with magnets

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/05/04/mit-scholar-fights-malaria-with-magnets/aixXl6a5quOF340XMEgtnK/story.html

by drjohnson • 12 years ago

51 16 12 years ago

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roblambert• 12 years ago

A certain Jesse Pinkman quote comes to mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwVDDxoKBk4

spacehome• 12 years ago

This isn't Reddit.

__matt• 12 years ago

"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"

Jemaclus2• 12 years ago

I wanna know how a mechanical engineer happens to learn enough about malaria for the thought to even cross his mind to check the iron in the blood with a magnet. What's that thought process like?

Fighting malaria is something I'm interested in pursuing, but my background is heavily in the computer science arena. How do I go about finding out enough about malaria to be able to actually contribute to the problem? (And I don't mean merely writing a check to the Anti Malaria Foundation or whatever.)

kanzure• 12 years ago

How do I go about finding out enough about malaria to be able to actually contribute to the problem?

Read as much as you can: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=malaria

w1ntermute• 12 years ago

I wanna know how a mechanical engineer happens to learn enough about malaria for the thought to even cross his mind to check the iron in the blood with a magnet.

A lot of mechanical engineers in academia are actually working on (or looking to work on) research that has medical applications, because you can get funding from the NIH. Although academics are technically supposed to be "independent," the funding climate ultimately drives research interests.

What's that thought process like?

Well, presuming that he was already well aware of the ability to use magnets to move minuscule quantities of iron, it starts out with something like this: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=human+body+iron

Note that it doesn't have to start out with malaria. In fact, you don't have to know anything about human disease when starting out.

pmorici• 12 years ago

Per the article it sounds like he worked with a malaria expert at the University he attended before going to MIT.

"He founded DDG in Cleveland, where he earned his undergraduate degree at Case Western Reserve University. Lewandowski’s cofounder and former faculty adviser, Brian T. Grimberg, is an assistant professor of international health at the university’s medical school, and a specialist in malaria."

atmosx• 12 years ago

First read a couple of papers in Malaria. You can easily go through terminology using wikipedia/google. If you don't have a strong background in human pathophysiology it's going to take some time, but given the right amount of time it's not thing really hard. You'll just give the time for some concepts to sink in.

What I'd like to see is an open source version of this machine which can be easily reproduced in pure countries.

HOWEVER, smart as it may seem, if I don't see some triple-checked hard-data, it's hard to tell if the magnets approach actually works and here is were professional clinical trials are made. Because in real life it's extremely hard to take say 5.000 blood samples from people who might be infected (e.g. Africans) right down the results, then go to a professional lab and compare the samples. Write down the results, find in which conditions concentration of 'Fe' is high in blood. Probably talking to the IDI[1] would be a nice first step and so on.

[1] http://www.irondisorders.org/iron-overload

Jemaclus2• 12 years ago

Awesome. Thanks for the tip!

batoure• 12 years ago

The title of this article should be "Yay Science!"

During the time when I lived in Africa I was treated for "presumed" malaria on several occasions despite taking preventative medication. The key is "presumed" because my fever cycled at night (the best time to draw blood for the existing test) they could never actually show that I had the disease because at night the lab was closed.

Malaria is an awful disease and the ability to treat earlier and possibly prevent the spread is fantastic news.

ihnorton• 12 years ago

Also covered in the NYT about a year ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/health/new-rapid-malaria-t...

The Gates Foundation has been funding development of a very similar technique by another group since 2010: http://www.malariaworld.org/sites/default/files/mwjournal/ar...

It appears to be an active and promising area of research as several other groups have published work back to at least 2008: http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130312/srep01431/full/srep01... (2013) http://www.malariajournal.com/content/9/1/207 (2010) http://www.cell.com/biophysj/abstract/S0006-3495(08)70272-8 (2008)

tom_jones• 12 years ago

To renew my faith in humanity, every day I look for some happy news. I hope this technology is successful.

DiabloD3• 12 years ago

I agree. Sometimes I wonder if its only stories like this that even keep me going every day.

kirk21• 12 years ago

Great. Guess the next step is to launch genetically modified mosquitoes that do not carry the disease and can replace the other ones.

teddythetwig• 12 years ago

Question, the article states that the device should be able to determine whether the malaria parasite has infected the subject while they are asymptomatic. From my limited knowledge of malaria, I was under the impression that during the asymptomatic stage, malaria is multiplying in the liver and does not infect any red blood cells. How will this detect malaria if they are not excreting the iron crystals into the blood stream?

MIT scholar fights malaria with magnets

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