This post originally appeared on @theU and was published March 17, 2025. This article is republished here with permission.
Tracey Lamb, professor of pathology, is the University of Utah’s first National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Jefferson Science Fellow. In this role, she will spend time with the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy, advising the federal government on international infection disease-related policies, participating in Global Health Diplomacy efforts and creating Global Health Security training.
“This experience will allow Dr. Lamb to bring back firsthand foreign policy experience to benefit our diverse institutional initiatives in global health,” said Peter Jensen, chairman of the Department of Pathology.
Lamb is part of a robust global health research group at the U that addresses critical health challenges in topics ranging from maternal and child health to infectious disease prevention and treatment to improving trauma and emergency systems. Collectively, the researchers aim to improve health equity in low- and middle-income countries.
Lamb’s research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms of malaria with a goal of uncovering knowledge that could lead to novel ways of treating the disease. Malaria causes an estimated 250 million cases annually, resulting in 597,000 deaths in 2023, mainly in pregnant women and children under 5 years of age. Sub-Saharan Africa bears the greatest burden.
For the last 10 years, Lamb’s team has worked with collaborator Dr. Lawrence Ayong at the Centre Pasteur du Cameroun on a range of projects, discovering Eph receptors to be an important family of molecules that heavily influence disease processes in malaria, such as liver fibrosis and neurological complications.
Her current work investigates how innate immune cells can dampen inflammation in children who carry the Plasmodium parasites that cause malaria but do not become sick. Akin to asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 who spread infection in the community, these children can still transmit the parasites to mosquitos. The insights of Lamb’s research could uncover new strategies for preventing and treating malaria.
As an adjunct scientist in the Malaria Unit at the Centre Pasteur du Cameroun, she and members of her team travel there regularly to work with Ayong’s team and train the next generation of Cameroonian immunologists in cellular immunology techniques. She expects the fellowship will strengthen her ability to collaborate with international agencies, such as Cameroon’s Ministries of Health and Education and the President’s Malaria Initiative, and to train U students and faculty in these practices.
“The State Department promotes global health by collaborating with other governments and implementing policies abroad,” Lamb said. “This promotes a healthier world and protects the health of the American population. I’m honored to play a small part in this effort.”
After receiving her doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, Lamb was a fellow at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. From there, she served as faculty at Emory University and joined the U Department of Pathology in 2017.
Banner photo: Tracey Lamb, center, with Lawrence Ayong to her right, with Dr. Ayong’s team at Centre Pasteur du Cameroun in Yaoundeé, Cameroon.