Alberto Moreno, M.D.
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Position Associate Professor of Medicine, Infectious Diseases Role in MaHPIC Co-Program Director Contact E-mail: alberto.moreno@emory.edu Personal Statement I have over twenty five years of experience working in several aspects of malaria research from basic immunology to preclinical and clinical trials of malaria vaccine candidates. Given my strong interest on malaria vaccine development, I have worked with diverse experimental animal models of malaria that involve rodent, simian and human malaria parasites. Specifically, I have extensive experience working with several species of Aotus monkeys (A. nancymae, A. vociferans and A. nigriceps) and rhesus macaques. Relevant to MaHPIC , we have recently developed a non-human primate model of severe malaria that reproduces the clinical complications observed in humans infected with P. falciparum. In the course of these experiments, we have designed and implemented experimental procedures to optimize the close clinical follow-up of rhesus macaques experimentally infected with simian malaria parasites. Such methodologies allowed the identification of the critical role of non-infected erythrocyte removal and dyserythropoiesis as mechanistic factors involved in malarial anemia pathogenesis. Our studies also have shown the complexity of the parasite-host interplay and the great value of high-throughput technologies to understand in depth the mechanisms involved in malaria pathogenesis. |