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 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

And presumably then, if a mosquito comes along and rechallenges a person with malaria again while they're on this agent, then they're going to get a big immune response to that liver stage which is permitted to proceed, but then it never translates into clinical disease because the parasite's blocked again at that stage.

So they get all the benefits of the immune priming, none of the disbenefit of the disease.

Tell us about the evidence you've got that this is going to work though, 'cause it sounds like a wonderful approach.

It sounds like an amazing theory if if if it works, but what's the evidence that this really can deliver?

Does this require the individual to remain on the drug though?

So is this drug only effective while you keep taking it?

Like every other anti malaria we've got at the moment.

Brilliant, isn't it?

Just embody there at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia.

That research just out in the journal Science.

NHS England has said the UK is leading the world in efforts to eliminate hepatitis C.

This bloodborne virus infection, which was only discovered in recent decades, affects hundreds of millions of people around the world, and it's a major risk factor for liver cirrhosis and liver cancer.

But the development over the last decade of a suite of new drugs that specifically target the virus has turned what

was a chronic disease with a poor prognosis into something we can routinely cure and potentially even eradicate globally, because us humans are the only host.

UK deaths from the infection are already down by a third, with England one of just a handful of nations to have already surpassed the World Health Organization benchmark towards eliminating the agent from our shores.

Will Gelson is a consultant hepatologist at Adambrookes Hospital in Cambridge, and he kindly joined us from his holiday in Normandy, where he's hopefully not punishing his own liver too severely with Calvados that Normandy is known for, to bring us up to speed.

What fraction of the population, both in the UK but also globally, are thought to have this?

So point five I'm just trying to work that out.

So that must mean there's a couple of hundred million people around the world who are affected and th this causes cirrhosis.

Is that all it does or does it have other implications?

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