Publications

Systematic in vitro evolution in reveals key determinants of drug resistance.

November 29, 2024
Surveillance of drug resistance and the discovery of novel targets-key objectives in the fight against malaria-rely on identifying resistance-conferring mutations in parasites. Current approaches, while successful, require laborious experimentation or large sample sizes. To elucidate shared determinants of antimalarial resistance that can empower in silico inference, we examined the genomes…
  • Journal Article
  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Revisiting the Plasmodium falciparum druggable genome using predicted structures and data mining.

November 26, 2024
The identification of novel drug targets for the purpose of designing small molecule inhibitors is key component to modern drug discovery. In malaria parasites, discoveries of antimalarial targets have primarily occurred retroactively by investigating the mode of action of compounds found through phenotypic screens. Although this method has yielded many…
  • Journal Article
  • Preprint

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
  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

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…
  • Journal Article
  • Preprint
Courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine