David Fidock is faculty at Columbia University in New York and the new scientific advisor to the Institut Pasteur president.
Plasmodium falciparum is tremendously skilled at overcoming therapeutics and host immunity. P. falciparum causes severe malaria in over half a billion individuals and kills over a million African children yearly. It also prevents sterilizing immunity even in individuals who have been infected thousands of times. Disease can result from severe anemia, hyperparasitemia, or other complications resulting from sequestration of parasitized red blood cells. Chemotherapeutic clearance of blood stage parasites is the key to malaria treatment and control, however it is systematically thwarted by the acquisition of resistance.

David Fidock is invited by Molly Ingersoll and Catherine Lavazec.