To strengthen malaria surveillance, field-appropriate diagnostics requiring limited technical resources are of critical significance. Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) based malaria diagnostic assays are potential point-of-care tests with high sensitivity and specificity and have been used in low-resource settings. Plasmodium vivax–specific consensus repeat sequence (CRS)-based and Plasmodium falciparum–specific 18S rRNA primers were designed, and a two-tube LAMP assay was developed. The diagnostic performance of a closed-tube LAMP assay and Loopamp™ Malaria Detection (Pan/Pf, Pv) kit was investigated using nested PCR confirmed mono- and co-infections of P. vivax and P. falciparum positive (n = 149) and negative (n = 67) samples. The closed-tube Pv LAMP assay showed positive amplification in 40 min (limit of detection, LOD 0.7 parasites/µL) and Pf LAMP assay in 30 min (LOD 2 parasites/µL). Pv LAMP and Pf LAMP demonstrated a sensitivity and specificity of 100% (95% CI, 95.96–100% and 89.85–100%, respectively). The Loopamp^TM Pan/Pf Malaria Detection kit demonstrated a sensitivity and specificity of 100%, whereas Loopamp^TM Pv showed a sensitivity of 98.36% (95% CI, 91.28–99.71%) and specificity of 100% (95% CI, 87.54–100%). The developed two-tube LAMP assay is highly sensitive (LOD ≤ 2 parasite/µL), demonstrating comparable results with the commercial Loopamp™ Malaria Detection (Pf/pan) kit, and was superior in detecting the P. vivax co-infection that remained undetected by the Loopamp™ Pv kit. The developed indigenous two-tube Pf/Pv malaria detection can reliably be used for mass screening in resource-limited areas endemic for both P. falciparum and P. vivax malaria.

Antibiotic-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii infections among patients in hospital settings are rising at an alarming rate. The World Health Organization has designated carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii as a priority pathogen for drug discovery. Based on the open drug discovery approach, we screened 400 compounds provided as a Pandemic Response Box by MMV and DNDi to identify compounds with antibacterial and antibiofilm activity against two A. baumannii reference strains using a highly robust resazurin assay. In vitro screening identified thirty compounds with MIC ≤ 50μM having growth inhibitory properties against the planktonic state. Five compounds, with MMV IDs MMV396785, MMV1578568, MMV1578574, MMV1578564, and MMV1579850, were able to reduce metabolically active cells in the biofilm state. Of these five compounds, MMV396785 showed potential antibacterial and antibiofilm activity with MIC, MBIC, and MBEC of 3.125 μM, 12.5, and 25–100 µM against tested A. baumannii strains, respectively, showing biofilm formation inhibition by 93% and eradication of pre-formed biofilms by 60–77.4%. In addition, MMV396785 showed a drastic reduction in the surface area and thickness of biofilms. Further investigations at the molecular level by qRT-PCR revealed the downregulation of biofilm-associated genes when exposed to 50 µM MMV396785 in all tested strains. This study identified the novel compound MMV396785 as showing potential in vitro antibacterial and antibiofilm efficacy against A. baumannii.