Jacquin Niles is an associate professor of biological engineering at MIT. His lab pioneers research in the area of Malaria, a disease that was reported to have killed 627k people in 2012 (with 80% being in sub saharan Africa). However Niles is also looking at a way to maybe befriend the deadly parasite and work with it’s ways, something he describes as a feature.

Niles is particularly interested in the people who get the Malaria parasite but don’t die, that’s estimated at 200 million.

Many seemingly live with it in their blood and have no adverse affects.

He is imagining a way to make use of that and explore the possibility of modifying the parasite to become a drug delivery mechanism, direct into the blood stream! He said

“We can, through engineering, convert this organism’s parasitic lifestyle into a more symbiotic relationship,”

It sounds all sorts of amazing and scary all at the same time!

Niles has the support of the Bose Grant and will be developing the idea over the next three years. He is currently studying what molecules within the organism can be modified and playing around with inserting molecules into the gene sequence.

This is out there but maybe one day it really will make drug delivery easier and save lives!

Read more at MIT News: http://news.mit.edu/2016/faculty-profile-jacquin-niles-0122

Image: https://be.mit.edu/directory/jacquin-c-niles and Wikipedia