This image shows mini engineered livers comprising hepatocytes (liver cells) and supporting stromal cells within a macroporous 3D matrix. One bottleneck in the development of antimalarial drugs and vaccines is the lack of cost-effective and reproduceable human-based disease models for screening. This image of liver spheroids is part of a project that proposes to develop engineered liver tissues that support long-term hepatocyte survival and function to study microenvironmental factors for Plasmodium parasite traversal into the human liver and enable robust malaria infection.