Principal Investigator (PI)
The Foundation is providing £198,239 in support.
Dr. Stanley Cheng Xie
Current antimalarial control is highly dependent on Artemisinin-based Combination Therapies (ACTs), which makes the emergence of artemisinin (ART) resistance extremely concerning. This situation highlights the need to identify new drugs targeting different mechanisms in the parasite. The proteasome is a validated target for malaria. Inhibitors of the proteasome show parasiticidal activity against both ART sensitive and resistant parasites, and are active both against sexual and asexual intraerythroctyic stages, as well as liver stages. Moreover, the Leann Tilley lab has demonstrated that inhibitors of the proteasome strongly synergize ART-mediated killing of P. falciparum, being also suitable for combination therapies.
The objective of this Open Lab project is to undertake a screening campaign to identify P. falciparum-specific proteasome inhibitors, thereby avoiding any toxicity associated with inhibition of the human proteasome. An extensive compound characterization will be performed, determining the parasitological profile and the mechanism of action applying tools developed in parallel during the project.