Infectious
Malaria
Malaria is a serious and sometimes fatal disease caused by a parasite that commonly infects a certain type of mosquito which feeds on humans. Infection with malaria parasites may result in a wide variety of symptoms, ranging from absent or very mild symptoms to severe disease and even death. People who get malaria are typically very sick with high fevers, shaking chills, and flu-like illness. In general, malaria is a curable disease if diagnosed and treated promptly and correctly.Treatment depends on many factors including disease severity, the species of malaria parasite causing the infection and the part of the world in which the infection was acquired.
Starter kit
Draft · not yet expert-reviewedUpdated Nov 12, 2026Start building on malaria
Malaria has some of the richest open data of any neglected disease: labeled blood-smear images, tens of thousands of parasite genomes, global risk maps and even mosquito sound recordings. The hard problems sit where models meet the field: diagnosis that works on cheap equipment, early warning of drug resistance, and targeting interventions where cases actually are.
Know malaria well? This kit hasn't been checked by an expert yet.Check our work →Open datasets6
- NLM malaria blood smear datasets ↗
Thin and thick blood smear photos from infected and uninfected patients, with parasite and cell annotations, from the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Thick smears from 350 patients and thin smears from 364 patients, plus a single-cell image set
ImagingOpen downloadLicense not stated
- BBBC041: P. vivax infected blood smears ↗
Giemsa-stained blood smear images with a bounding box and class for every cell, covering uninfected cells and four parasite stages.
1,364 images, about 80,000 cells
ImagingOpen downloadCC BY-NC-SA 3.0
- MalariaGEN Pf8: P. falciparum genome variation ↗
Curated genome variation for parasites sampled worldwide, with drug-resistance genotypes, diagnostic-test-escaping deletions, a Python package and Colab notebooks.
33,325 samples from 34 countries
GenomicsOpen downloadCC BY 4.0
- Malaria Atlas Project data portal ↗
Modelled maps of malaria infection prevalence, incidence and mortality, plus intervention coverage estimates.
MapsOpen downloadCC BY 3.0 (maps); survey records keep their original source terms
- HumBugDB: mosquito flight-tone recordings ↗
Audio of mosquitoes in free flight, recorded in the lab and the field, with species and capture metadata for training detectors and species classifiers.
20 hours of audio, 36 species, 4.1 GB
AudioOpen downloadCC BY 4.0
- Open Source Malaria Series 3 compounds ↗
Open lab data for an antimalarial compound series developed with Medicines for Malaria Venture, including structures and assay results.
MoleculesOpen downloadCC BY 4.0 unless otherwise stated
Benchmarks and tasks3
- BBBC041 cell detection ↗Detect every cell in a smear image and classify it as uninfected or as one of four parasite stages. Imaging
- HumBugDB mosquito detection and species ID ↗Detect mosquito flight tones in audio, then classify the species, with published baseline code. Audio
- Open Source Malaria Series 4 activity ↗Predict whether a compound inhibits P. falciparum at 1 µM and 2.5 µM; Ersilia's baseline reaches cross-validated AUROC above 0.8 on about 400 compounds. Molecules
Open questions6
- 01
Can automated smear reading work reliably across different microscopes, stains and phone cameras?
Microscopy is the standard test, but it needs trained staff that many clinics lack, and models trained on one lab's images often fail on another's.
- 02
Where are parasites with hrp2/hrp3 deletions spreading?
These deletions let infections slip past the rapid tests most clinics rely on.
GenomicsMapsSource: MalariaGEN Pf8 ↗
- 03
Can genomic surveillance give early warning of drug resistance before treatments start failing?
Resistance to frontline drugs has emerged before; Pf8 now includes resistance genotypes and copy-number calls across 34 countries.
GenomicsSource: MalariaGEN Pf8 ↗
- 04
Which compounds hit both the blood stage that causes illness and the sexual stage that spreads infection?
Drugs that block transmission are scarce; only about 3% of actives in large screens hit both stages.
- 05
Can cheap phones identify malaria-carrying mosquitoes by sound?
Knowing which species are present guides spraying and bed-net campaigns, and traditional trapping is slow and expensive.
AudioSource: HumBugDB ↗
- 06
Can fine-grained risk maps be kept current enough to target nets, drugs and vaccines?
Resources are limited, and maps go stale as interventions change where cases occur.
MapsEpidemiologySource: Malaria Atlas Project ↗
Who's working on this6
Ersilia Open Source Initiative
Open, ready-to-run ML models for infectious disease drug discovery, including malaria activity predictors.
The most direct entry point for an ML builder: models install with one command, and the team asks for new contributors.
Contribute code through GitHub issues and the contributing guide, or propose a model through a Model Request issue.
MalariaGEN
Pf8, an open dataset of P. falciparum genome variation in 33,325 samples, with a Python package, notebooks and web apps.
Free Colab notebooks and a Python package make it the fastest way into malaria genomics.
Data is open to use; contributing samples happens through partner studies.
No public invitation foundEvidence, Jun 30, 2025 ↗
Malaria Atlas Project (The Kids Research Institute Australia, Curtin University, Ifakara Health Institute)
Global malaria database and modelled maps of infection, cases and deaths.
Ready-made geospatial targets and covariates for forecasting and targeting models.
No public invitation foundEvidence, Sep 22, 2026 ↗
U.S. National Library of Medicine, Lister Hill Center
Annotated blood smear datasets and the Malaria Screener smartphone app for automated diagnosis.
The source of the most widely used malaria image datasets, with published methods to compare against.
No public invitation foundEvidence, date unknown ↗
HumBug, University of Oxford
Identifying mosquito species from flight tone recorded on budget smartphones.
Open audio data and baseline code for a rare health problem that suits audio ML.
Malaria-focused work ran 2020 to 2024; the current phase (2024 to 2027) targets invasive species in the UK.
No public invitation foundEvidence, Sep 1, 2025 ↗
Open Source Malaria
Open drug discovery on antimalarial compound series, with all lab data public on GitHub.
Open structure and assay data that has already been used to train activity models.
Activity unclear: last repository update September 2024, and the project website domain no longer points to the project.
No public invitation foundEvidence, Sep 30, 2024 ↗
What this kit is missing
- No formal leaderboards found; the benchmarks listed are datasets with standard tasks and published baselines.
- No clinical or patient-record datasets yet.
- P. vivax genomic data is not covered; Pf8 is P. falciparum only.
- The NLM datasets page states no license; check terms before commercial use.
- Not yet verified: Medicines for Malaria Venture's Malaria Libre open drug discovery programme (only 2020 launch coverage found) and the WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network's data tools.
Curated by the Unsolved project team. Every link was checked on the date shown; licenses are as stated by each source.
Where the field stands
01
Early understanding
No strong gene target or drug candidate yet
02
Target found
At least one gene target with strong evidence
03
Drug candidates
Preclinical or phase 1 drug candidates
04
In trials
Drug candidates in phase 2 or later
05
Has approved drugs
At least one approved drug; not necessarily a cure
Derived from Open Targets drug and target data, not self-reported.
Healthy years lost (DALYs), 2023
51.6M
95% range 21.4M to 94.4M
Deaths, 2023
670k
People living with it, 2023
176.4M
GBD cause: Malaria (exact match)
Research attention
What there is to build on
Open Targets Platform ↗Gene targets with strong evidence
2
of 2,951 associated genes
Top associated genes
TLR9TLR7ABOHBBMMP8
Drugs and clinical candidates
102
Approved drugs
37
Identifiers
- Open Targets
- MONDO_0005136
- MeSH
- D008288
- ICD-10
- B53
- Orphanet
- ORPHA:673
Trial and paper counts are rough measures of attention, not of progress. This page is for research planning, not medical advice.