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Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

Daily Overview

Session

CP18.1: Cells, Molecules & Genes 3 - 5 min talks

Time:

Thursday, 02/July/2026:

2:40pm - 2:45pm

Session Chair: Shilpa Kapoor, The University of Melbourne
Session Chair: Balu Balan, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute

Location: Lecture Theatre 1

Boulevard Room 3

Presentations

Investigating the function of and impact of polymorphism in the malaria vaccine candidate Plasmodium falciparum merozoite surface protein 2.

Kaitlin Turland¹, Dimithu Angage², Isabelle Henshall³, Robin Anders², Michael Foley², Melanie Ridgway¹, Danny Wilson¹

¹Adelaide University, Adelaide, Australia; ²LaTrobe University, Melbourne, Australia; ³Bernard-Nocht Institute of Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany

The significant global burden of malaria, caused by Plasmodium spp., warrants novel treatment and prevention strategies. Plasmodium falciparum merozoite surface protein 2 (PfMSP2) has been a target of blood stage malaria vaccines, which have reached phase I/2b clinical trials. Strain-specific polymorphisms complicate the development of this antigen as a vaccine candidate; most PfMSP2 genes can be classified into two main alleles, FC27 and 3D7. Bioinformatic comparison indicates that MSP2 of Laverania species maintain conserved and intrinsically disordered property regions, and tend to have repeat structures that most closely resemble P. falciparum 3D7-like alleles. We successfully knocked out PfMSP2 in both FC27- and 3D7-like parasites, which did not influence blood stage growth but did increase potency of antibodies targeting another vaccine candidate, PfAMA1. The ama1 genotypes of parasites with 3D7- and FC27-like msp2 do not significantly differ, indicating the dimorphism of PfMSP2 is not significantly influenced by PfAMA1 diversity. Ongoing work is applying microscopy and gene editing techniques to understand the role of PfMSP2 in potentiating antibodies to AMA1. This work will define the impact of msp2 diversity on antibodies targeting other antigens and will help inform merozoite vaccine development.