After transmission through an infective mosquito bite, malaria-causing Plasmodium parasites travel through the vasculature to reach the liver, where they massively replicate before infecting red blood cells.

Despite decades of research, our understanding of the cellular and molecular interactions enabling the parasite to arrest on the liver microvasculature and later infect hepatocytes remains very limited, partly due to the lack of adequate human infection models. These blind spots have been a key barrier to the development of new and effective vaccines and antimalarial treatments.

This project will bioengineer new in vitro platforms that capture the complexity of the human liver to investigate host-parasite interactions with the liver microvasculature and their impact on hepatocyte infection. Specifically, we aim to characterise parasite interactions with engineered human 3D liver microvessels and to build a vascularised human microliver to shed light on receptor-ligand interactions driving early infection. This project will lay the foundation for a deeper understanding of potentially targetable host-pathogen interactions and generate a preclinical platform aimed at evaluating therapeutic interventions.

Maria Bernabeu (EMBL Barcelona), Liliana Mancio-Silva (Institut Pasteur)