Grant: Operating Grant

Parasitic worms infect over a billion people worldwide and are a major cause of suffering in the developing world. As with other types of infectious disease, parasites are developing resistance to the few available drugs. We need to understand the mechanisms by which parasites become resistant to drugs in order to diagnose, treat and manage the problem. This project will investigate the processes by which parasites modulate the activity of drugs and become resistant to them. The identification of the molecules involved is an important step in the development of sensitive and accurate tests for the diagnosis of resistance. It may also allow the design of new pharmaceutical agents which block these processes which would provide new powerful approaches to the treatment of drug resistant parasites.