Grant: Operating Grant

Malaria is a major public health problem caused by the infection with apicomplexan parasites of the genus Plasmodium. These obligatory intracellular parasites infect an estimated 500 million people annually, resulting in over 1 million deaths seach year. A vaccine is not available and resistance to antimalarial drugs is widespread. It has been estimated that the number of cases will double in the next 20 years unless new methods of treatment and control are developed. The publication of genome sequences for Plasmodium falciparum, the analysis of its transcriptome and proteome provides the research community with exciting new possibilities in the fight of this disease. However, new treatments arising from genomic targets remain some way off and there are still multiple black boxes in the complex life cycle of the parasite that are beyond our current knowledge. This is one of the biggest hurdles in the fight against this disease. The malaria parasite spends much of its time within the human erythrocyte. All the symptoms of malaria occur during erythrocytic development and consequently most anti-malarial therapies target this developmental stage. The objectives of this proposal are to identify and validate novel key players in erythrocyte invasion in order to deepen our understanding of this fundamental biological process and to identify novel therapeutic targets. It will concentrate on (1) the functional characterization of novel proteins implicated in invasion and (2) the assessment of phosphorylation as a suitable therapeutical target. These two approaches on its own will significantly contribute to the field of host-parasite interaction but their synergistic effects will facilitate and accelerate the understanding of human red blood cell invasion on the molecular level.