Rapid phenotyping towards personalized malaria medicine

Abstract

Malaria is major public health concerns which continues to claim the lives of more than 435,000 people each year. The challenges with anti-malarial drug resistance and detection of low parasitaemia forms an immediate barrier to achieve the fast-approaching United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of ending malaria epidemics by 2030. In this Opinion article, focusing on the recent published technologies, in particularly the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based diagnostic technologies, the authors offer their perspectives and highlight ways to bring these point-of-care technologies towards personalized medicine. To this end, they advocate an open sourcing initiative to rapidly close the gap between technological innovations and field implementation.