Dr Katharine Collins

Dr Katharine Collins is based at the Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands. Her current research aims to improve our understanding of malaria transmission dynamics and to use this knowledge to inform the development and implementation of transmission-blocking interventions. She is currently leading field studies that evaluate the infectious reservoir of malaria and assess the impact of interventions on malaria prevalence and transmissibility. Dr Collins also pioneered the development of new controlled human malaria infection (CHMI)-transmission models to enable early-clinical evaluation of transmission-blocking drugs and vaccines. She is continuing this work and establishing these models in malaria endemic settings.

Dr Collins obtained her PhD from the University of Oxford and her Master’s degree from the University of Bath. Her contribution to the field of malaria research began in 2008 at the Jenner institute, University of Oxford, where she developed expertise in many areas of malaria vaccine development. She successfully designed and produced R21, a malaria vaccine candidate which is now under Phase II evaluation in Oxford and West Africa. She assessed the safety, immunogenicity and protective efficacy of a number of other malaria vaccine candidates using CHMI studies, and was involved in the design and implementation of clinical trials evaluating vaccine immunogenicity in malaria endemic countries. In 2015, Dr Collins moved to Australia and joined the Clinical Tropical Medicine laboratory at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute where she led the malaria transmission studies project. She established a malaria insectary and gametocyte culture facilities and led a small multidisciplinary team. She developed the new CHMI-transmission models where she demonstrated, for the first time, that P. falciparum and P. vivax can be transmitted from humans to mosquitoes during CHMI studies. Importantly, these new models will accelerate the development of drugs and vaccines aiming to interrupt malaria transmission by enabling them to be easily and quickly evaluated in small human pilot studies. The models have also improved our understanding of P. falciparum and P. vivax transmission, which will provide important information for malaria control and elimination agendas. Whilst at QIMR she was also involved in the development of a new P. malariae CHMI model and the evaluation of new antimalarial compounds in P. falciparum and P. vivax CHMI studies.

Dr Collins is actively involved in teaching and training. She teaches on the global health course at Radboud University, she supervises students based in the Netherlands, Burkina Faso and The Gambia, and she is Principal Investigator on a capacity building project in Burkina Faso. As an active member of the malaria research community she co-chaired the Gordon Research Symposium on malaria in 2019, and acts as the scientific advisor for the Fight Malaria website and podcast.