Discovering new compounds to treat global infectious disease

描述（由申请人提供）：世界卫生组织目前的估计表明，全球传染病病例正在上升。疟疾仍然是非洲、南美洲和亚洲贫穷和不发达国家的一种毁灭性疾病，据报2009年有近100万人死亡。在这些地区，寄生虫可迅速产生耐药性，从而削弱抗疟药物的疗效。因此，迫切需要新药和新靶点的鉴定来治疗疟疾。我与Michael Marletta教授（加州大学伯克利分校）的研究生学习涉及对人类健康重要的酶的详细机械研究。为了了解更多关于传染病和化学生物学的知识，我加入了哈佛医学院（HMS）乔恩·克拉迪教授的实验室。在HMS，我接受了与疟疾寄生虫的血液和肝脏阶段一起工作的培训。这次培训使我能够开发一种高通量筛选方法，以识别肝期疟疾的抑制剂。在接下来的两年里，我计划筛选几个小分子文库，寻找治疗疟疾的潜在疗法（具体目标1）。在HMS期间，我还将与几位专家一起学习如何在疟疾中产生基因敲除，培养抗药性寄生虫菌株，并维持转基因蚊子品系。然后，我可以使用这种训练来评估我确定的肝期疟疾抑制剂靶向的寄生虫的生物过程（具体目标2），并进行生物化学表征 蛋白质靶点（特异性目标3）。具体目标2和3所需的培训将在K99阶段完成，但大部分实验将在独立阶段完成。我计划申请一个终身制的学术职位，目标是领导一个研究小组，专注于表征促进疾病过程的疟疾寄生虫的基本过程和蛋白质。HMS非常适合拟议的K99培训期，因为它拥有最先进的高通量筛查设施，并且是传染病研究的领导者，其项目包括哈佛疟疾倡议。我相信我在未来两年所接受的课程和培训将会拓宽 我对寄生虫生物学的理解，很好地补充了我以前在酶学方面的技能，使我特别适合作为一名独立的研究人员从事全球传染病的研究。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Current estimates from the World Health Organization suggest that global cases of infectious disease are rising. Malaria remains a devastating disease in poor and undeveloped countries in Africa, South America and Asia, where nearly one million deaths were reported in 2009. In these areas, parasites can rapidly develop drug resistance, which erodes the efficacy of antimalarials. Thus new drugs and the identification of novel targets are desperately needed to treat malaria. My graduate studies with Prof. Michael Marletta (UC Berkeley) involved detailed mechanistic studies on enzymes that are important to human health. To learn more about infectious disease and chemical biology I joined Prof. Jon Clardy's lab at Harvard Medical School (HMS). At HMS I received training to work with both the blood and liver stages of the malaria parasite. This training allowed me to develop a high-throughput screen to identify inhibitors of liver stage malaria. In the next two years I plan o screen several small molecule libraries for potential therapeutics to treat malaria (Specific Aim 1). During my time at HMS I will also train with several experts to learn how to generate genetic knockouts in malaria, raise drug resistant parasite strains, and maintain transgenic mosquito lines. I can then use this training to evaluate the biological processes of the parasite that my identified liver stage malaria inhibitors target (Specific Aim 2) and to biochemically characterize the protein targets (Specific Aim 3). The training needed to address Specific Aims 2 and 3 will be completed at HMS during the K99 phase of the award, but most of the experiments will be completed during the independent phase of the award. I plan to apply for a tenure-track academic position with the goal of leading a research group focused on characterizing essential processes and proteins of the malaria parasite that facilitate the disease process. HMS is ideally suited for the proposed K99 training period as it has a state-of-the-art high- throughput screening facility and is a leader in infectious disease research with programs like the Harvard Malaria Initiative. I believe the courses and training I receive in the next two years will broaden my understanding of parasite biology and nicely complement my previous skills in enzymology to make me uniquely suited to work on global infectious disease as an independent researcher.