The world has come a long way since 1897 when Sir Ronald Ross, a British army surgeon working in Secunderabad India, proved that malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes. Then in 1900 Giovanni Battista Grassi, an Italian zoologist, showed that malaria could only be transmitted to humans by Anopheles (Greek “anofelís”: good-for-nothing) mosquitoes. Ross received the 1902 Nobel Prize for Physiology (or Medicine) for “his work on malaria, by which he has shown how it enters the organism and thereby has laid the foundation for successful research on this disease and methods of combating it.”

Malaria (Latin “mal aria”: bad air) remains a major public health problem, causing 250 million cases of fever and approximately one million deaths annually, hence understanding its history—for literally unraveling its future—is key to its defeat. Another malaria milestone is about to be unveiled with Paul Wiseman.

Paul Wiseman is one highly popular professor in Canada. Soon he’ll also be well-liked in malaria-endemic regions of the world. An associate professor concurrently at the Departments of Physics and Chemistry of McGill University, Canada, Wiseman obtained his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Western Ontario in 1995 before joining McGill in 2001 after post-doctoral fellowships from far apart Japan and the United States of America.

Wiseman is now set for celebrity status, all around the world. He has a novel technique on display that holds the promise of eliminating malaria.
Wiseman’s research team developed a radically new technique that uses lasers and non-linear optical effects to detect malaria infection in human blood. The new technique promises simpler, faster and far less labour-intensive detection of the malaria parasite in blood samples.
Malaria is a vector-borne infectious disease most common in tropical and subtropical regions. Most of the fatalities are in sub-Saharan Africa, where the resources and trained personnel currently required to accurately diagnose the disease are most unavailable.

Current detection techniques require trained technicians to stain slides, look for the parasite’s DNA signature under the microscope, and then manually count all the visible infected cells, a laborious process dependent on the skill and availability of trained analysts. The proposed new procedure is a radical departure from the traditional technique: it relies on a known optical effect called third harmonic generation (THG), which causes hemozoin (a crystalline substance secreted by the parasite) to glow blue when light is shone directly on it by an infrared laser.

“People who are familiar with music know about acoustic harmonics,” explains Dr. Wiseman. “You have a fundamental sound frequency and then multiples of that frequency. Non-linear optical effects are similar: if you shine an intense laser beam of a specific frequency on certain types of materials, you generate multiples of the frequency. Hemozoin has a huge, non-linear optical response for the third harmonic, which causes the blue glow.”

Dr. Wiseman looks forward to adapting well-established existing technologies like fibre-optic communications lasers and fluorescent cell sorters to promptly move the technique out of the laboratory and into the field.
The work has already won Wiseman a Fessenden Professor in Science Innovation Award. “We’re imagining a self-contained unit that could be used in clinics in endemic countries,” Dr. Wiseman beams with satisfaction. “The operator could inject the cell sample directly into the device, and then it would come up with a count of the total number of existing infected cells without manual intervention.” Now, that’s music to the health of millions; best of all it’s to cost just a song, a pittance compared to its benefits.

The latest breakthrough promises to change the known facts about malaria. Doctors will now need less than a minute to detect malaria. Researchers say it’s going to be much cheaper and faster than other Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDT), also known as “dip sticks,” now being used by doctors all over the world to detect malaria.

Currently used rapid diagnostic tests diagnose malaria by checking for malarial parasites in the blood, but results are not always correct and can sometimes be misleading. If there are not sufficient parasites in the blood to show up as positive, the test may turn out as negative. Haemozoin is a waste product of the malarial parasite in the blood.

According to Biophysical Journal, “early results indicate that it could be as effective as the rapid diagnostic tests, making it a potentially viable alternative.”
Winner of two teaching awards in 2007, Wiseman has been hailed for his “extraordinary abilities as a teacher” and as “a mentor and an outstanding role model for students and faculty alike.” He was awarded the 2009 Keith Laidler Award in Physical Chemistry by the Canadian Society for Chemistry.

Wiseman plays hockey and soccer when he’s not teaching or doing research. No wonder he’s always thinking about catching things—like the malaria parasite—before they score and do possibly irreparable damage, especially with cheap goals.

A power forward at hockey, clearly Wiseman possesses above average offensive skills for tackling a tough nut like malaria. Given his proficiency on ice playing hockey, he’s well able to coolly deliver a crushing blow to the beast that has persistently defeated the healthcare delivery system of many a nation as a recurrent economic burden. The framework of Wiseman's self-ordained mandate on malaria seems large enough to screen the disease off the socio-economic radar in not too long a time. With his well-rounded skill-set and mental acumen, it is gratifying to be introduced to this power forward so desirable to have on the team and intent on nailing malaria before it scores.