Immunity to Severe Malaria: PfEMP1 Tags Tell a Tale (Cell Host & Microbe)

PfEMP1 is the major surface antigen of P. falciparum-infected erythrocytes, mediates endothelial adhesion, and displays extreme sequence diversity that underpins antigenic variation. In this issue of Cell Host & Microbe, Tessema et al. (2019) find that antibodies isolated from a pediatric cohort that bind a discrete PfEMP1 subset associate with protection from severe malaria and predict future risk.