Publications

Antiplasmodial peptaibols act through membrane directed mechanisms.

February 15, 2024
Our previous study identified 52 antiplasmodial peptaibols isolated from fungi. To understand their antiplasmodial mechanism of action, we conducted phenotypic assays, assessed the in vitro evolution of resistance, and performed a transcriptome analysis of the most potent peptaibol, HZ NPDG-I. HZ NPDG-I and 2 additional peptaibols were compared for their killing…
  • Journal Article

Reaction hijacking inhibition of Plasmodium falciparum asparagine tRNA synthetase.

January 31, 2024
Malaria poses an enormous threat to human health. With ever increasing resistance to currently deployed drugs, breakthrough compounds with novel mechanisms of action are urgently needed. Here, we explore pyrimidine-based sulfonamides as a new low molecular weight inhibitor class with drug-like physical parameters and a synthetically accessible scaffold. We show…
  • Journal Article

Antimalarial drug discovery: progress and approaches.

October 31, 2023
Recent antimalarial drug discovery has been a race to produce new medicines that overcome emerging drug resistance, whilst considering safety and improving dosing convenience. Discovery efforts have yielded a variety of new molecules, many with novel modes of action, and the most advanced are in late-stage clinical development. These discoveries…
  • Journal Article
  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Review

Diverse evolutionary pathways challenge the use of collateral sensitivity as a strategy to suppress resistance.

September 22, 2023
Drug resistance remains a major obstacle to malaria control and eradication efforts, necessitating the development of novel therapeutic strategies to treat this disease. Drug combinations based on collateral sensitivity, wherein resistance to one drug causes increased sensitivity to the partner drug, have been proposed as an evolutionary strategy to suppress…
  • Journal Article

Reaction hijacking inhibition of asparagine tRNA synthetase.

July 27, 2023
Malaria poses an enormous threat to human health. With ever increasing resistance to currently deployed drugs, breakthrough compounds with novel mechanisms of action are urgently needed. Here, we explore pyrimidine-based sulfonamides as a new low molecular weight inhibitor class with drug-like physical parameters and a synthetically accessible scaffold. We show…
  • Preprint

Generation of a mutator parasite to drive resistome discovery in Plasmodium falciparum.

May 27, 2023
In vitro evolution of drug resistance is a powerful approach for identifying antimalarial targets, however, key obstacles to eliciting resistance are the parasite inoculum size and mutation rate. Here we sought to increase parasite genetic diversity to potentiate resistance selections by editing catalytic residues of Plasmodium falciparum DNA polymerase δ.
  • Journal Article
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Human Polo-like Kinase Inhibitors as Antiplasmodials.

April 14, 2023
Protein kinases have proven to be a very productive class of therapeutic targets, and over 90 inhibitors are currently in clinical use primarily for the treatment of cancer. Repurposing these inhibitors as antimalarials could provide an accelerated path to drug development. In this study, we identified BI-2536, a known potent…
  • Journal Article
  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine