CD40 and malaria: Recent advances suggested that CD40-CD40L ligation could initiate the activation TRAF2/3 mediated NF-κB pathways and production of IRF1 to eventually induce IFN-β expression (Stirnweiss et al., 2010; Moschonas et al., 2012). CD40 was reported to help eliminating the malaria parasites to reduce the severity of disease (Inoue et al., 2012; Murray et al., 2015; Gramaglia et al., 2017; Parmar et al., 2018).