Together with a team of researchers at the HPA Malaria Reference Laboratory, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Department of Clinical Parasitology, Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Colin Sutherland's research in malaria biology has led to the design of a new application of Loop-Activated Amplification (LAMP) technology for detecting DNA from Plasmodium parasites in the blood of suspected malaria patients. This has been developed into a simple diagnostic test kit by the Eiken Chemical Co., originators of LAMP technology, and with the support of the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) the LSHTM / HTD team have been stringently road-testing the kit for diagnosis of malaria at UCLH. Preliminary results to date are consistent with earlier small scale validation work, in which very high sensitivity and specificity were achieved. The test has the advantage of being simple and fast – results for a batch of samples can be obtained in about an hour.

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