MMV wishes to congratulate Prof. Dr. James McCarthy and Prof. Dr Peter Kremsner who were named Honorary International Fellows of ASTMH among a select group of five individuals at this year’s American School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) conference in Baltimore, USA. These two internationally renowned scientists have been working in close collaboration with MMV on the development of antimalarial medicines.

“It is an honour to have two eminent scientists among our global network of partners whose exceptional contributions to tropical medicine and hygiene have been publicly acknowledged at ASTMH,” said Jörg Möhrle, VP, Head of Translational Medicine at MMV. “Working with distinguished scientists like James McCarthy and Peter Kremsner has helped us accelerate the development of promising new antimalarial compounds that might one day contribute to the elimination of this terrible disease.”       

Prof. Dr. James McCarthy is Senior Scientist at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Researcher Institute, Senior Consultant Physician in Infectious Diseases at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, and a Conjoint Professor of Medicine at The University of Queensland., Australia. In 2010, in collaboration with MMV, he developed a controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) model to test the in vivo efficacy of new antimalarial drug candidates shortly after their safety in humans is established. Since 2015, his team have also been using the model to look at how molecules work in combination, and to assess transmission-blocking activity. The model is helping to accelerate the early clinical development of MMV’s candidate medicines.

This year, Prof. McCarthy was also named the Sornchai Looareesuwan Medal Winner, for his distinguished and outstanding achievements in malaria research.

Prof. Dr Peter Kremsner is Director of the Institute for Tropical Medicine at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He has been collaborating with MMV for over 10 years, as principal investigator / researcher on several clinical trials of MMV-supported medicines such as injectable artesunate and more recently the single-dose antimalarial combination therapy OZ439 (artefenomel)/piperaquine phosphate (PQP). His team have also been involved in adapting the CHMI model to explore the protective ability of malaria drug candidates.