HM13 and malaria: During this period, the work of Maria’s team also led to the identification of genistein as a potential drug for malaria prophylaxis (Cunha-Rodrigues et al., 2008), to the demonstration that Plasmodium liver infection can be inhibited by a small molecule inhibitor of signal peptide peptidase, with an impact on malaria severity (Parvanova et al., 2009), and that CpG phosphothioate oligodeoxynucleotides can act directly on Plasmodium sporozoites to inhibit their gliding motility, cell traversal ability and capacity to invade hepatic cells (Liehl et al., 2010).