Wellcome Trust leads parasitology research, analysis shows
10 July 2009
The online journal 'Lab Times' has published an analysis of papers from 1996 to 2007, which shows that Trust-funded researchers make up over three-quarters of the top 30 most cited authors in the field of parasitology - including the top seven.
Professor Nick White, Chair of the Wellcome Trust's South-east Asia Programme, heads the list, having been cited almost 12 000 times during the period. In second place is Professor Kevin Marsh, Director of the Kenya Medical Research Institute-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, with just over 7700 citations. Both have played a key role in tackling malaria in their respective regions and globally.
In addition, the most cited parasitology paper over the period - cited over 600 times - is the 'Nature' paper 'The global distribution of clinical episodes of Plasmodium falciparum malaria' by Professor Robert Snow and colleagues, also at the Kenya Programme. The research team has gone on to develop the Malaria Atlas Project to map global distributions of malaria risk.
"Parasites are responsible for some of the world's deadliest diseases, including malaria, African sleeping sickness and Chagas' disease," says Dr Pat Goodwin, Head of Pathogens, Immunology and Population Health at the Trust. "Wellcome Trust-funded scientists are playing a key role in furthering our understanding of how parasites cause disease. But importantly, they are also building the research capacity to enable local scientists to take a lead in tackling these deadly diseases in countries where they are endemic."
Image: Trypanosoma brucei brucei, a parasite that causes African sleeping sickness. Credit: Wellcome Images
Reference
Neumann R. Publication analysis 1996-2007: parasitology Lab Times 2009;3:38-40 [PDF 261KB]