Chris Smith

speaker

241 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 14 Aug

Chris Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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The Naked Scientists Podcast · Malaria drug breakthrough, and space radiation vests · 14 Aug 2026 podcast

Get this.

Welcome.

This is the show where we bring you science.

What that essentially means is discoveries.

Research.

Technology.

Unbelievable.

Without further ado, this is the Naked Scientists.

Hello, welcome to the Naked Scientists Podcast, the programme that brings you the biggest breakthroughs and talks to the major movers and shakers in the worlds of science, technology, and medicine with me, Chris Smith.

Coming up, a new drug that blocks malaria in a whole new way and turns future mosquito bites into vaccine boosters.

Also, England is close to eliminating hepatitis C.

How's it been done?

And can the

The rest of the world follows suit, and a designer vest to protect astronauts from space radiation gets tested on the Artemis missions.

Scientists in Australia have developed a new antimalarial drug that targets the stage at which the plasmodium parasite moves out of liver cells where it grows initially and into the bloodstream.

Now crucially, blocking that process not only prevents the disease becoming symptomatic and stops it spreading to other people, it also turns out that holding up the parasite like this leads to a very powerful immune response against it, which can block subsequent infections, potentially indefinitely.

It also means that any other mosquito bites that occur in the meantime act almost like vaccine boosters bolstering the existing immune response and reinforcing the protection.

It is a whole new way to halt malaria and to make people immune at the same time, and it's the brainchild of Melbourne's Water and Eliza Hall Institute researcher Justin Body.

And what are you doing to try and take that fight to the parasite?

Can you explain a bit more then, Justin, how this actually works in terms of how a drug that can block a parasite can also bolster an immune response like this?

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