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JACQUIN NILES:
All of my memories

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are growing up in a really tiny,
British-dependent territory

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called Anguilla.

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To give you some
perspective, it's

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about 35 square miles total
area, 36 during low tide.

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People knew each other.

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If you didn't know
them directly,

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you knew who their family
and relatives were.

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I became interested in medicine,
not just from the perspective

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of understanding the
fundamentals of how biology

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works in a living
entity, but also

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the idea that it can go awry.

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And how do you fix it?

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Every year, about
700,000 or so, mostly

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kids under the age of five, are
estimated to die from malaria.

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Malaria is a parasitic disease.

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It's caused by this family
of protozoan parasites.

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A mosquito becomes
infected by feeding

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on the blood of an
infected person.

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That blood can contain
infectious forms

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of a parasite that develops
within the mosquito,

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and eventually will get
into the salivary glands

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of the mosquito, and
then be transmitted back

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to the blood of another
person who was bitten

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by that infected mosquito.

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Within the red cell, there's
an extremely high concentration

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of hemoglobin, which contains
the co-factor heme that

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is responsible, largely,
for the transport of oxygen

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in the human body.

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The parasite is able to degrade
the majority of the hemoglobin

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within the red cell.

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The heme, it has to deal with.

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Because heme that
is not polymerized

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has the ability to convert
molecular oxygen into more

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reactive oxygen
species that can be

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damaging to membranes,
proteins, DNA, et cetera.

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And so the parasite
has devised a strategy

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for polymerizing this
heme into this inert

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polymer called hemozoin.

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And that actually provides
an opportunity for us,

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because if we can prevent
the polymerization of heme,

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in principle, we can see the
toxicity of heme reemerging.

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And so some of the
most successful

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anti-malarial compounds,
such as chloroquine,

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can actually bind heme and
prevent its polymerization.

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And presumably, the
increased amount

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of free heme that is produced
then kills the parasite.

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Why I don't practice
medicine currently,

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I think that's just been a
really valuable perspective

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and a framework for
me to think about what

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I do in the long term,
and how that can translate

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into some impact on human life.