The Malaria unit cultures Plasmodium falciparum and conducts in vitro assays of antimalarial susceptibility using morphological, radio-isotopic, fluorometric and immunoenzymataic methods.

Our team has the capacity to conduct quality control on malaria rapid diagnostic test lots following World Health Organization (WHO) and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) standards.

Genotyping of the parasite is done using conventional, real-time, and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) PCR. Other genotypification methods are utilized on specific projects, such as microsatellite and sequence analysis, through collaborations with partner laboratories.

Services

Currently, the Malaria unit is the only one in Colombia trained for malaria rapid diagnostic testing quality control. We are equipped with a P. falciparum and P. vivax aliquot bank, which we have collected following the standards recommended by the WHO World Aliquot Bank. Additionally, we are able to carry out genotypification of P. falciparum parasites.