DeAnna Friedman-Klabanoff, MD, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health’s (CVD) Malaria Research Program, spent the month of August in Malawi preparing for her project that will study the immunological basis of natural protection from malaria infection in children. Her research is part of her Burroughs-Wellcome/American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Postdoctoral Fellowship in Tropical Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Friedman-Klabanoff will use samples from an intensive cohort study performed as part of the NIH-funded Malawi International Center for Excellence in Malaria Research (ICEMR), a partnership between the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the Malaria Alert Center at the University of Malawi College of Medicine, and Michigan State University. Using diversity reflecting high throughput peptide arrays designed by researchers at the CVD’s Malaria Research Program, her goal is to identify promising new malaria vaccine candidates.

During her time in Malawi, Dr. Friedman-Klabanoff experienced the excitement and challenges of conducting clinical research in resource limited settings. She traveled to remote rural villages with her mentor, Miriam Laufer, MD, MPH, Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the CVD’s Malaria Research Program where Dr. Laufer is leading malaria studies as part of the ICEMR.  While in the field, Drs. Friedman-Klabanoff and Laufer supervised monthly surveillance visits and collected feedback on the survey tools and workflow to improve data and sample quality.

Back in the main laboratory at the Malawi College of Medicine, Dr. Friedman-Klabanoff also helped to implement of a sample tracking system for samples that were collected in the remote field sites and transported back to the laboratory for molecular analysis to measure malaria prevalence.   “While it is not always something that people think about when planning a study, the ability to track the samples obtained, know where they are stored and how much of each sample remains is complex, but critical for the success of the ICEMR and our ability to address some of the most important challenges in malaria ,” Dr. Friedman-Klabanoff commented.

Her time in Malawi culminated with a presentation to the scientific group about her planned use of the samples and the goal of the work she will be doing. She will return periodically throughout the two years of the Burroughs-Wellcome/ASTMH postdoctoral fellowship.

Dr. Friedman-Klabanoff was recently awarded a Pichichero Family Foundation Research Development, Vaccines for Children Initiative Award in Pediatric Infectious Diseases from the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society to expand the scope of this project. “Part of the reason why I came to the University of Maryland School of Medicine for my Pediatric Infectious Disease fellowship was because of the long-term relationships that the CVD and Malaria Research Program have with the field research sites. I love that our research is not just conducted in a silo, but also facilitates research capacity building in the places in which we work. I hope that over the next several years I can begin to contribute to this capacity building as my research program continues to grow,” said Dr. Friedman-Klabanoff.