Affymetrix, Inc. (NASDAQ: AFFX) announced today that an
international team of researchers led by scientists at Boston
College, the Broad Institute, and Imperial College London used an
Affymetrix custom microarray to advance the study of malaria by
assessing the variation in genetic structure and detecting known
and novel genetic differences among malaria vector mosquito
populations. This study will enable association studies that link
mosquito genes to insecticide resistance and parasite infection
susceptibility, ultimately helping to reduce malaria
transmission.
Published today in the journal Science, this groundbreaking
discovery by a global consortium of 17 scientists, will enable more
research on effective interventions against malaria, which annually
sickens more than 240 million people and causes 860,000 deaths,
most among young children. While advances in insecticides and
anti-malarials have reduced transmission and death rates, the rate
of decline is in danger of slowing due to increasing resistance to
interventions, the mosquito’s adaptive nature, and the pathogen’s
ability to evade mosquito defenses.
“The renewed goal among malaria researchers, advocated by
Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation in 2007, is to eradicate
malaria in our lifetime,” said lead researcher Marc Muskavitch,
DeLuca Professor of Biology at Boston College. “But vaccines have
not been successful, and insecticides and anti-malarials keep
losing effectiveness. If we are going to eradicate it, new
interventions are needed,” he added. “What we needed was a better
tool to look at the complexity of mosquito populations, to help us
find genes that help mosquitoes evade our interventions and
transmit disease.”
The team used the Anopheles gambiae (AG) SNP1 Array, a
proprietary microarray designed by Affymetrix in collaboration with
the research team. The array features 400,000 SNPs of the 3 million
found among four sequenced strains of Anopheles gambiae, providing
vastly higher resolution than the 42- and 1,536-marker sets
otherwise available to malaria vector biologists.
Over several malaria seasons, the international consortium,
including scientists from the University of Notre Dame, the Malaria
Research and Training Center in Mali, and the Harvard School of
Public Health, collected mosquito samples from Mali and Burkina
Faso and used the Affymetrix platform to genotype samples to
validate array probes and define a vastly expanded SNP marker set
for this malaria vector mosquito.
“With a higher resolution than ever before, we are beginning to
understand how malaria vector mosquito populations become separated
reproductively, in a process called ‘incipient speciation,’ and
develop different traits to become better at evading interventions
we deploy against them,” noted Muskavitch. “Now we are developing
new collaborations to use this tool to understand the genes
underlying resistance to insecticides and the ability of mosquitoes
to transmit malaria. Understanding those genes can help us to
control mosquito populations more effectively, and try to help the
mosquito use its defenses more effectively to reduce malaria
parasite transmission.”
“This groundbreaking research put scientists in the malaria
community a step closer to identifying mosquito genes and alleles
linked to malaria transmission, insecticide resistance, and
parasite vulnerability,” said Affymetrix President and CEO Kevin
King. “Thanks to their work, the prospect of significantly reducing
the spread of this disease and improving the lives of millions of
people around the globe is within reach.”
The scientists plan to encourage adoption of the AG SNP1 Array
within the vector biology community in preparation for the next
wave of research, which will focus on understanding the complexity
of the mosquito populations in even greater depth, the mosquito
genes that affect Plasmodium transmission, and the genes that can
be used to improve mosquito control.
“We plan to make this powerful array available to the
community,” said Muskavitch. “We’re expecting to complete this
effort by early next year, when Affymetrix will make it
available.”
“As part of our ongoing focus on enabling genomic research in a
wide range of species and disease and infectious areas, we are
pleased to partner with Drs. Muskavitch of Boston College, Roger
Wiegand of the Broad Institute, and their entire team to make this
valuable research tool broadly available to the scientific
community,” said Jay Kaufman, Vice President of Strategic
Marketing, DNA Applications, at Affymetrix. “With our long history
of these partnerships, we recognize the value of cutting-edge
scientific research combined with proven microarray technologies,
and the overall benefit this brings to those pursuing the
improvement of human health.”
Another Affymetrix custom array is helping scientists looking to
develop more effective treatments for malaria. The GNF Malaria
Tiling Array, a high density tiling array of Plasmodium falciparum,
developed in collaboration with the Genomics Institute of the
Novartis Research Foundation, was used by an international team of
scientists responding to increased tolerance to a new class of
anti-malarials. Led by genomic scientist Elizabeth Winzeler of the
Department of Cell Biology at the Scripps Research Institute, the
team used the array to screen a diverse chemical library for new
parasite-killing compounds and discovered a parasite gene that
mediates resistance to a new potential drug lead. "Affymetrix
microarray technology allowed us to rapidly examine the entire
genome of the resistant malaria parasite strains and discover newly
evolved mutations in PfATP4 that may be involved in maintaining ion
homeostasis,” said Winzeler. “Microarrays allowed us to
simultaneously identify both the single-base changes and the copy
number variants in PfATP4. It is not clear that we would have been
as successful if we had used full-genome sequencing instead.”
Affymetrix scientists collaborate with the scientific community
in the MyGeneChip™ Custom Array Service program to deliver
consistent, reproducible results across all types of studies and
are widely respected for ensuring excellence in research and
development in probe selection, array design, and
manufacturing.
About Affymetrix
Affymetrix technology is used by the world's top pharmaceutical,
diagnostic, and biotechnology companies, as well as leading
academic, government, and nonprofit research institutes. More than
1,900 systems have been shipped around the world and more than
22,000 peer-reviewed papers have been published using the
technology.
Affymetrix is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., and has
manufacturing facilities in Cleveland, Ohio, and Singapore. The
company has about 1,000 employees worldwide and maintains sales and
distribution operations across Europe and Asia. For more
information about Affymetrix, please visit www.affymetrix.com.
Forward-looking statements
All statements in this press release that are not historical are
"forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 21E of
the Securities Exchange Act as amended, including statements
regarding Affymetrix' "expectations," "beliefs," "hopes,"
"intentions," "strategies," or the like. Such statements are
subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results
to differ materially for Affymetrix from those projected. These and
other risk factors are discussed in Affymetrix' Form 10-K for the
year ended December 31, 2009, and other SEC reports for subsequent
quarterly periods.
NOTE: Affymetrix, the Affymetrix logo, and GeneChip are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Affymetrix, Inc.
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