The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

Dr Justin Boddey

Details

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Division: Infection and Immunity

Research Overview

Every year, several hundred million people contract malaria, resulting in approximately 800,000 deaths, marking malaria as one of the most pernicious infectious diseases in the world. Research that illuminates how the malaria parasite survives within human cells will help guide important research to develop new antimalarial therapies and vaccines.

Malaria parasites reside within two human cell types: liver cells and blood cells. Following the bite of a malaria-infected mosquito, the parasites rapidly find and invade the liver. Here they grow silently for about one week, producing thousands of parasites without eliciting an immune response. This intracellular secrecy is crucial to the parasite’s success, and is followed by thousands of parasites escaping the liver to find a new home in red blood cells. Once inside the red blood cells, the parasites renovate them by delivering hundreds of proteins into the cell, another crucial step for parasite survival and evasion of the immune system.

We are interested in understanding how malaria parasites live inside host cells and manipulate their intracellular environment. Our research is dedicated to developing new small molecule inhibitors that can block the ability of parasites to modify their host cells. This involves studying the protein export pathway in blood and liver-stages of disease to determine the best parasite targets. We also use genetics, biochemistry and cell biology to study the biological mechanisms used by parasites to survive within, and manipulate, host cells.

Our research is expanding into the liver-stage of malaria and uses the deadly human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum as well as the rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium berghei, to address these questions.

Research Interests

• Role of exported proteins in the intracellular dynamics of liver-stage malaria
• Molecular mechanisms underlying hepatocyte traversal
• Plasmepsin V inhibitors as new antimalarial agents
• Understanding the role of malaria proteins in erythrocyte remodeling

Selected Publications

1. Kappe SHI, Vaughan AM, Boddey JA, Cowman AF. That was then but this is now: malaria research in the time of an eradication agenda. Science. 2010;328: 862-6. PMID: 20466924
2. Boddey JA, Hodder AN, Gunther S, Gilson PR, Patsiouras H, Kapp EA, Pearce JA, de Koning-Ward TF, Simpson RJ, Crabb BS, Cowman AF. An aspartyl protease directs malaria effector proteins to the host cell. Nature. 2010;463: 627-31. PMID: 20130643
3. deKoning-Ward TF, Gilson PR, Boddey JA, Rug M, Smith BJ, Papenfuss AT, Sanders PR, Lundie RJ, Maier AG, Cowman AF, Crabb BS. A newly discovered protein export machine in malaria parasites. Nature. 2009;459: 945-9. PMID: 19536257
4. Richard D, Kats LM, Langer C, Black CG, Mitri K, Boddey JA, Cowman AF and Coppel RL. Identification of rhoptry trafficking determinants and evidence for a novel sorting mechanism in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. PLoS Pathogens. 2009;5: e1000328. PMID: 19266084
5. Boddey JA, Moritz RL, Simpson RJ, Cowman AF. Role of the Plasmodium export element in trafficking parasite proteins to the infected erythrocyte. Traffic. 2009;10: 285-99. PMID: 19055692

Click here to view more PubMed publications

Current Laboratory Members

Faculty Member: Justin Boddey, BBiomedSc(Hons) PhD Griffith

Senior Postdoctoral Fellow: Brad Sleebs, BSc(Hons) PhD LaT

Research Assistant: Matthew O'Neill, BSc(Hons) Melb

PhD Student: Pravin Rajasekaran, BBiomed(Hons) Melb