Target identification for antimalarial drugs has historically represented a major challenge, resulting in only fragmentary understanding of the mechanism of action (MoA) of many among clinically used and candidate antimalarial compounds. The lack of a well-characterised drug-target space prevents prioritisation of compounds with novel MoA for development and structure-activity optimisation studies, as well as the rational design of synergistic drug combination therapies.
In this project, students will have an opportunity to use emerging Mass Spectrometry-based functional proteomics tools to identify drug-targets and characterise drug-induced perturbations in Plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest among malaria-causing parasite species. Identified candidate-targets will be characterised in detail through a combination of biochemical, structural and genetic approaches, including CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing and recombinant protein expression
