PIO SENTENCED TO 5 YRS IN PRISON

WASHINGTON DC: A team led by an Indian-origin scientist has designed a new “second generation” malaria vaccine that may offer protection against Plasmodium falciparum parasite, which causes the deadly disease.

Malaria, which infected about 228 million individuals worldwide in 2018, remains a threat to public health and regional stability, according to Sheetij Dutta from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) in the US.

Large human populations live in malaria-infested regions of Africa, Southeast Asia and South America, where mosquitoes continuously transmit the malaria parasites from sick to healthy individuals.

Though infection rates have been decreasing, this decline has stagnated in recent years, necessitating novel interventions, according to the study published in the journal PNAS.

The first generation malaria vaccine, RTS,S (Mosquirix), is based on the circumsporozoite protein (CSP) of Plasmodium falciparum. CSP is a secreted protein of the malaria parasite, and is the target of RTS,S vaccine. While RTS,S has conferred high level protection in controlled human malaria infection trials, its potency and duration of protection against natural malaria infection needs to be improved, the researchers noted. In an attempt to develop a second-generation malaria vaccine, Dutta's laboratory at the WRAIR, has used the nano-sized disk and rod shaped particles of the tobacco mosaic virus. TMV was one of the earliest known viruses that causes mottling of tobacco

leaves.

The research shows that the TMV coat protein can also be highly effective as a vaccine scaffold to refocus the host immune system to the most vulnerable epitopes -- part of an antigen molecule to which an antibody attaches itself -- on CSP.

PESHAWAR: A Pakistani court on Tuesday rejected the transit bail plea of a prominent Pashtun minority leader, known for criticising the country's powerful military, and ordered his transfer to another jail, a day after he was arrested for alleged sedition, leading to calls for his immediate release.

Manzoor Pashteen, chief of the rights-based alliance Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), attended a gathering on January 18 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Dera Ismail Khan city where he had allegedly said that the 1973 Constitution violated basic human rights, Dawn newspaper reported.

The 27-year-old activist, arrested along with nine other PTM workers from Peshawar, was earlier sent to Peshawar's Central Jail on a 14-day judicial remand by a magistrate.

District and sessions judge Muhammad Younis accepted the police's request to shift Pashteen to a jail in Dera Ismail Khan, where a first information report (FIR) has been registered against him, Dawn newspaper reported.

The request of a transit bail to Pashteen, who was represented by his lawyers, was rejected by the court, the report said.