Le Roch Lab
Our Goal:
Discovery of a new therapeutic approach for the treatment of malaria
With an estimate of 700,000 new infections and up to 3 million deaths per year, malaria represents one of the most important diseases in the developing world. The absence of a vaccine and the development of parasite resistance to commonly used antimalarial drugs underscore the urgency for new therapeutic approaches. The goal of my research is to define a novel line of defense and characterize innovative critical drug targets.
One of the fundamental ways in which eukaryotic organisms regulate dynamic cellular processes is by evoking the ubiquitin/proteosome system (UPS). As a central hub for protein turnover and post-translational modification, the UPS is being showcased as an important system for therapeutic intervention in humans. My laboratory is undertaking a multifaceted effort to identify components and key mechanisms of the UPS in the malaria parasite, P. falciparum. We are employing the power of comparative genomics to discover unique apicomplexan proteins while utilizing advanced molecular and proteomic techniques to analyze the function and identify molecular interactions in the parasitic UPS pathway. Ultimately, our main goal is to monitor the UPS pathway activity to target disease relevant regulatory events in the parasite life cycle. With the combined efforts of target identification and small molecule and natural compound screens, we are aiming to break the cycle of malaria infection and resistance.
