Professor Peter Kremsner, the winner of the EDCTP Dr Pascoal Mocumbi Prize 2023, has used the cash prize of €50,000 to strengthen capacity at the Centre de Recherches Medicales de Lambaréné (CERMEL, Gabon) and to start preparations for a randomised clinical trial on malaria treatment.

Frequent water and power cuts in Gabon are affecting activities at CERMEL. For this reason, Prof. Kremsner has started a project to ensure that CERMEL is self-sufficient in water and power supply at the research centre. The research centre can now use ground water on the occasions that the public water supply is not available. Using the EDCTP prize, Prof. Kremsner has also started a project to install solar panels at the campus, thus ensuring that CERMEL has a fully independent power supply throughout the year.

The funds received from the Prize have supported the initiation of a study that aims to establish the safety, tolerability, efficacy, and effectiveness of a single-dose treatment for uncomplicated malaria. Although there are good therapies to cure uncomplicated malaria, they need to be given over three days, and the most widely used treatment, artemether-lumefantrine needs to be given in a complicated six-dose regimen. Prof. Kremsner’s team designed a randomised, controlled clinical trial comparing a single-dose combination of artesunate-pyronaridine plus sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine with the standard six-dose combination of artemether-lumefantrine treating uncomplicated malaria in Gabon. The study started in 2024 and preliminary data shows that the one-day regimen is comparable to the standard regimen. If this holds true, this investigator-initiated trial, sponsored and mainly funded by CERMEL, offers possibilities for simplified malaria treatment.