Bill Gates: 'This is the most dangerous transformation monster on the planet'

Recently, billionaire Bill Gates had an article revealing a "monster" capable of transforming right on Earth. And it kills up to 400,000 people every year.

* The article was translated from Bill Gates' sharing on GatesNote - the billionaire blog page

I still remember a part of the old Star Trek movie (American astronaut classic movie). The evil side has a shapeshifter , and he turns himself into Captain Kirk. The story is fascinating until the end, when the Spock guy has to find a way to figure out who is a fake.

The ability to transform seems to be something only in science fiction. But no, they exist right on Earth, as the way deepening into butterflies is also a form of transformation. However, there is an extremely dangerous type of transfiguration, currently causing up to 400,000 deaths a year.

These are the parasites that cause malaria .

Malaria is currently one of the most fatal diseases our fund (BMGF) is addressing, and the cause is the ability to change the shape of the parasite. They find the wisest ways to deceive our immune system. They can even avoid most human efforts to create vaccines.

To understand why, let's learn a little bit about our immune system

The immune system has a very good mechanism for detecting foreign agents to invade the body. Imagine, it looks for proteins on the host surface and says: "I have never seen this before, just attacked." After defeating the intruder, the immune system will remember the shape of the person, so they no longer have a chance to appear.

Vaccine works well thanks to taking advantage of this process. A vaccine contains part of the virus in it. It is too weak to make you sick, but it is enough for your body to learn how to fight when viruses actually appear.

However, malaria is somewhat more complicated.First , what causes the disease is a parasite, which parasites are not so strange to the body as viruses or bacteria. It even has a resemblance to cells in the body. Therefore, the immune system wants to work, it takes more time.

Malaria parasites have the ability to transform.

The second problem is that malaria parasites undergo three stages of change in the body, and each time is very different. When the disease gets worse, it's also when your body has to deal with 3 variations at a time.

Stage 1 is when mosquitoes bite you and transmit saliva containing about 100 parasites in it (called sporozo). Now they are very small, do not cause any reaction to the body, so the immune system does not bother.

After 1 - 2 hours, the other parasites found their liver and began to evolve into stage 2 - called merozo - and sought to invade red blood cells. This process makes you feel fever, cold - symptoms that make up the name of this disease today.

At this stage the body begins to be damaged, so the immune system will work. However, the parasite transformation process has not yet ended, and trouble continues to occur.

Vaccines help the body identify the proteins of a certain virus strain. But it is important to know that the vaccine works because the virus is cloned, so the proteins are the same. As for malaria, each one has up to 60 different proteins - thanks to the mechanism of self-mixing proteins over time.

Consequently, when the parasite found a way to beat this form, the parasite turned into another form, making the immune system useless. The immune system can continue to learn, but it cannot be faster than their transformation.

Then in stage 3, the merozo begin to develop the genitals, forming males and females. They enter the blood vessels, wait for the mosquitoes to suck and carry them. In the mosquito's abdomen, they spawn sporozo parasites, which begin the next cycle of infection.

So how to control and solve this disease?

Many people think that we can create a vaccine that recognizes all forms of parasites. But unfortunately that is not feasible.

The only vaccine we can do to date is to fight parasites that cause pneumonia. It is very expensive, and can only contain more than 10 forms. Malaria has 60 forms, not to mention hundreds of other forms worldwide.

The malaria research community (including our BMGF fund) has been working for years to get a vaccine that protects us from the beginning, from before they molt and cause disease. Vaccine is called "RTS, S" , giving us an immune system that hunts a small protein sample that always exists on the parasite.

Parasites are a complex form of life, so it is difficult to have an effective vaccine for each of the diseases they cause.

However, the level of protection that RTS and S bring is not strong enough, but not long enough to completely solve the disease. Instead, there are several options for treatment that are more cost-effective, so RTS and S are not applied much.

People often ask me if this is a waste of money, but has no success? I just replied: It is not so. Of course, I was disappointed because there has not been a vaccine yet to solve this story. However, this is a difficult task. Parasites are a complex form of life, so it is difficult to have an effective vaccine for each of the diseases they cause.

Furthermore, studies from RTS and S also give science a clearer view of how malaria parasites work, and clues to stop them. In fact, most of what we know about malaria body reaction comes from this study.

The current scientific community is aiming for new approaches from the immune system, to create cells capable of accumulating stronger antibodies. Another solution is to synthesize antibodies to the body, instead of relying on the immune system.

Knowing how malaria infection can be "smart" makes me appreciate the efforts of this world when fighting against them. Since 2000, malaria mortality has dropped by 42%. And based on what I'm observing, the future of defeating this metamorphic monster is also very feasible.

• New way to kill malaria parasites
• Warning about the occurrence of drug-resistant malaria parasites