The Drug Resistance group validates and characterizes the function of candidate drug resistance genes identified through pharmacogenomic and population genetic strategies. Work includes investigation of when a compound is most effective in the parasite lifecycle (including asexual, sexual and mosquito stages), how quickly resistance arises in vitro and how the compound is killing the parasite. We use CRISPR/CAS9 strategies to generate inducible knock down parasite lines as well as tagged…
The Drug Discovery group incorporates chemogenomic strategies to identify potential drug targets, analyze both target-based and non-target-based mechanisms of drug resistance, and advance antimalarial compounds through the drug development pipeline through collaborations including the MalDA (Malaria Drug Accelerator) consortium. MalDA is a scientific consortium funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) for malarial drug target identification and drug development. Leveraging the expertise of various groups and collaborating to…
The Genetic Diversity and Population Genetic Modeling Group leverages population genetic variation for threat detection, including drug resistance and diagnostic failure, and for transmission surveillance for tracking infections and to evaluate the consequence of intervention use. Along with collaborators in Senegal and partners, we are benchmarking genetic metrics of risk and transmission across transmission strata to create integrated datasets that include epidemiological and entomological metrics of transmission for modeling to…
