Rupam Tripura

Dr Rupam Tripura is a clinical researcher based at the Mahidol-Oxford Topical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) research stations in Cambodia. The main focus of his work has been to conduct clinical trials to understand the nature of drug-resistant falciparum malaria in western Cambodia and to develop treatment regimens, and strategies to combat the spread of resistance.

In 2008-2010, after the first reports of artemisinin resistant falciparum malaria, he was involved in a trial to look at the effect of high-dose or split-dose artesunate against artemisinin-resistant falciparum in western Cambodia. In 2011-13, he led the research team in Pailin, a site for the Tracking Resistance to Artemisinins Collaboration study (TRAC), an open-label, multicentre clinical trial conducted. In 2014-16, he was involved in the Triple Artemisinin Combination (TRAC 2) study in western Cambodia, which evaluated the efficacy, safety, and tolerability of combining three antimalarial treatments against standard artemisinin combination therapy (ACT). During 2013-14, He led a series of community based epidemiological studies to understand asymptomatic plasmodium infections and explore whether these are a barrier to malaria elimination. Therefore, during 2015-17, he jointly led the Cambodian sites for a multicentre clinical trial entitled Targeted Malaria Elimination (TME) which evaluated the effectiveness, safety and acceptability of three round of mass drug administration (MDA) with dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine in areas of multidrug resistant falciparum malaria. Currently, he is conducting in a clinical trial in Northern and Western part of Cambodia which evaluates artemether-lumefantrine with or without amodiaquine. The aim is to develop a treatment regimen against multi-drug resistant falciparum malaria.