Guest Editors
Dr. Nekpen Erhunse
University of Benin
Dr. Nekpen Erhunse received her BSc and MSc in Biochemistry from the University of Benin, Nigeria. In 2016, she was awarded the prestigious Arturo Falaschi Pre-doctoral fellowship to do her PhD at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi, India. Her doctoral research focused on the discovery of antiplasmodial agents from medicinal plants of Africa. Haven successfully isolated and purified the alkaloidal compounds, she went on to identify their target on the malaria parasite. Upon completing her Ph.D. in 2020, she moved back to Nigeria and resumed her position as an Assistant Professor. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the Malaria Drug Discovery and Pathobiochemistry group, University of Benin, Nigeria. Her research focuses on understanding the malaria parasite biology so as to identify novel druggable targets on the parasite that can guide the discovery of multi-stage antiplasmodial agents. She is a recipient of the 2023 UNESCO-TWAS Seed Grant for New African Principal Investigators (SG-NAPI) for malaria drug discovery and development.
Dr. Prakhar Agrawal
National Institute of Immunology
Dr. Prakhar Agrawal received his M.Sc. in Biotechnology from Banaras Hindu University in 2016. Following that, he completed his Ph.D. at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. His doctoral study focused on the identification of new therapeutic targets and the discovery of a unique family of inhibitors that target the blood stage of P. falciparum. He joined the National Institute of Immunology as a Research Associate after completing his Ph.D. in 2022. Dr. Agrawal is now working on characterization of the molecular and structural basis of pathogen-human protein interactions, which can be used to create novel inhibitors and antibodies.
Dr. Priyanka Sharma
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), Pembroke Place, Liverpool L3 4DA
Dr Priyanka Sharma graduated from the University of Mysore, India with MSc in Molecular Biology in 2011. Subsequently, she completed her PhD in Biotechnology from Institute of Advanced Study in Science and Technology (IASST), India in 2017 where she worked on the characterization of novel antimicrobials from actinobacteria isolated from the Indo-Burma mega bio-diversity hotpot. She received the prestigious DBT-RA and NPDF fellowships to pursue post-doctoral research at International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), India where she worked on the screening of novel antimalarials against Plasmodium falciparum. In 2022, as a Research Associate in the School of Dentistry at Cardiff University, UK, she investigated antimicrobial and antibiofilm activity of hexylresorcinol and commercially available products in human saliva. Currently, she is working as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine where she is investigating novel antimicrobial compounds from environmental microorganisms active against human pathogens and characterizing the promising compounds by mass spectrometric techniques.
Collection Overview
The surge in malaria cases results from various factors, including the spread of resistant malaria parasites, insecticide resistance by the vector, and an increase in counterfeit antimalarial drugs. This surge has thwarted previous gains recorded in malaria control. Implementing measures to expedite the process of discovering antimalarial drugs would be necessary to achieve the goal of eradicating malaria.
While medicinal plants have provided some of the best antimalarials, screening natural product libraries using phenotypic assays has not yet yielded any hits with sufficient quality. As such, most agents in the antimalarial drug development pipeline are discovered using a combination of phenotypic screening and target-based screening of synthetic molecules.
Target-based drug screening requires the use of recombinant chemically validated targets and is thus more expensive than phenotypic screening, which is done against the whole parasite cell. However, target-based screening offers the opportunity to develop new biochemical assays against such targets, which can help in the rational design of more potent inhibitors, ultimately speeding up the drug development process.
As a result, our proposed Methods Collection will center around recent approaches for identifying malaria parasite targets and developing biochemical assays for clinically validated targets of licensed antimalarial drugs as well as newer targets.
