Profile of Thomas E. Wellems.

M alaria parasites can hijack red blood cells and escape immune defenses, producing a disease that causes tremendous rates of childhood mortality and disability, especially in Africa. Many medicines developed against malaria have lost efficacy, because the parasites evolve and gain resistance. Thomas E. Wellems, chief of the Laboratory of Malaria and Vector Research in the Division of Intramural Research, National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease (Bethesda, MD), attacks malaria from the laboratory and the field. A researcher and physician, Wellems, who was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007, has not only discovered secrets of Plasmodium falciparum’s ever-changing surface proteins and pinpointed the gene for resistance against the antimalarial drug chloroquine, he has fostered diagnosis and treatment in some of the most affected regions of the world. In his Inaugural Article published in a previous issue of PNAS, Wellems and colleagues show how certain mutations in the chloroquineresistance gene can combine with mutations in another gene for multiple drug resistance to protect malaria parasites against a related antimalarial drug, amodiaquine (1). Parasites with resistance to both amodiaquine and chloroquine blanket the Amazon region of South America, and Wellems worries that Africa may soon find itself in a similar bind.