Project 523 is a code name for a 1967 secret military project of the People's Republic of China to find antimalarial medications. Named after the date the project launched,23 May,it addressed malaria,an important threat in the Vietnam War. At the behest of Ho Chi Minh,Prime Minister of North Vietnam,Zhou Enlai,the Premier of the People's Republic of China,convinced Mao Zedong,Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party,to start the mass project "to keep [the] allies' troops combat-ready",as the meeting minutes put it. More than 500 Chinese scientists were recruited. The project was divided into three streams. The one for investigating traditional Chinese medicine discovered and led to the development of a class of new antimalarial drugs called artemisinins. Launched during and lasting throughout the Cultural Revolution,Project 523 was officially terminated in 1981.
Tu Youyou is a Chinese malariologist and pharmaceutical chemist. She discovered artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin,used to treat malaria,a breakthrough in twentieth-century tropical medicine,saving millions of lives in South China,Southeast Asia,Africa,and South America.
The Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine (AITHM) is an Australian tropical health and medical research institute based at James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville and Cairns,Queensland. Formerly known as the Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine,AITHM was established at JCU in 2008.
The various academic faculties,departments,and institutes of the University of Oxford are organised into four divisions,each with its own Head and elected board. They are the Humanities Division;the Social Sciences Division;the Mathematical,Physical and Life Sciences Division;and the Medical Sciences Division.
Piperaquine/dihydroartemisinin (DHA/PPQ),sold under the brand name Eurartesim among others,is a fixed dose combination medication used in the treatment of malaria. It is a combination of piperaquine and dihydroartemisinin. Specifically it is used for malaria of the P. falciparum and P. vivax types. It is taken by mouth.
Sir Adrian Vivian Sinton Hill,is a British-Irish vaccinologist who is Director of the Jenner Institute and Lakshmi Mittal and Family Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford,an honorary Consultant Physician in Infectious Diseases,and Fellow of Magdalen College,Oxford. Hill is a leader in the field of malaria vaccine development and was a co-leader of the research team which produced the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine,along with Professor Sarah Gilbert of the Jenner Institute and Professor Andrew Pollard of the Oxford Vaccine Group.
Adrianus Mattheus Dondorp is a Dutch intensivist,infectious diseases physician,and head of the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Bangkok. He is best known for his research in severe falciparum malaria,a disease that requires intensive care in hospital. He chairs the World Health Organization Technical Expert Group on antimalarial medication drug resistance and containment.
Sir Andrew James McMichael,is an immunologist,Professor of Molecular Medicine,and previously Director of the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford. He is particularly known for his work on T cell responses to viral infections such as influenza and HIV.
The Faculty of Tropical Medicine,Mahidol University is the only faculty specialising in tropical medicine in Thailand. It operates the Mahidol Bangkok School of Tropical Medicine (Mahidol-BSTM) as the main teaching facility and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases for patient treatment.
Dominic Kwiatkowski was an English medical researcher and geneticist who was head of the parasites and microbes programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge and a Professor of Genomics at the University of Oxford. Kwiatkowski applied genomics and computational analysis to problems in infectious disease,with the aim of finding ways to reduce the burden of disease in the developing world.
Alan Frederick Cowman AC,FRS,FAA,CorrFRSE,FAAHMS,FASP,FASM is an internationally acclaimed malaria researcher whose work specialises in researching the malaria-causing parasite,Plasmodium falciparum,and the molecular mechanisms it uses to evade host responses and antimalarial drugs. As of May 2024,he is the deputy directory and Laboratory Head of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) in Melbourne,and his laboratory continues to work on understanding how Plasmodium falciparum,infects humans and causes disease. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 2011 and awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia in 2019 for his "eminent service to the biological sciences,notably to molecular parasitology,to medical research and scientific education,and as a mentor."
Trudie Lang is a Professor of Global Health Research at the University of Oxford. She specialises in clinical trials research capacity building in low-resource setting,and helped to organise the trial for the drug brincidofovir during the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak.
The Jenner Institute is a research institute on the Old Road Campus in Headington,east Oxford,England. It was formed in November 2005 through a partnership between the University of Oxford and the UK Institute for Animal Health. It is associated with the Nuffield Department of Medicine,in the Medical Sciences Division of Oxford University. The institute receives charitable support from the Jenner Vaccine Foundation.
John Andrew Crump MB ChB,MD,DTM&H,FRACP,FRCPA,FRCP is a New Zealand-born infectious diseases physician,medical microbiologist,and epidemiologist. He is Professor of Medicine,Pathology,and Global Health at the University of Otago and an adjunct professor of medicine,Pathology,and Global Health at Duke University. He serves as inaugural co-director of the Otago Global Health Institute,one of the university's research centres. His primary research interest is fever in the tropics,focusing on invasive bacterial diseases and bacterial and viral zoonoses.
Kevin Marsh is a British Malariologist,academic and a researcher. He is a professor of Tropical Medicine and Director of Africa Oxford Initiative at University of Oxford. He is also a senior advisor at African Academy of Sciences.
Elizabeth Ashley is a British physician who is Director of the Laos-Oxford-Mahosot Hospital-Wellcome Trust Research Unit (LOMWRU) in Laos. She specialises in infectious diseases and medical microbiology and virology. She is an associate editor for the Malaria Journal and serves on the Council of the International Society for Infectious Diseases.
Susanna Jane Dunachie is a British microbiologist who is Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Oxford. Her work considers microbiology and immunology to better understand bacterial infection and accelerate the development of vaccines. She has focused on melioidosis,scrub typhus and tuberculosis. During the COVID-19 pandemic,she studied T cell immunity to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.
Guy Edward Thwaites is a British professor of infectious diseases at the University of Oxford,and director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. His focus is on severe bacterial infections,including meningitis and Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infection,and tuberculosis. He is a former first-class cricketer.
David A. Fidock,is the CS Hamish Young Professor of Microbiology and Immunology and Professor of Medical Sciences at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in Manhattan.
Fred Newton Binka is a public health physician and researcher from Ghana. He serves as a distinguished professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) in Ho,Ghana,and has previously coordinated the World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency Response to Artemisinin Resistance in the Greater Mekong sub-region of Asia. He is the founding vice-chancellor of UHAS and the former executive secretary of the INDEPTH Network,a global network of health and demographic surveillance systems. His work in malaria control and health development in Africa,particularly in the areas of vitamin A supplementation,insecticide-treated bed nets,and rotavirus and meningitis vaccination,has been impactful.
