Validating protein kinases as a target for next generation anti-malarial drugs
Our laboratory are leaders in understanding the basic biology and therapeutic value of malaria protein kinases. Using molecular parasitology methods and proteomic approaches this project will investigate fundamental aspects of essential Plasmodium falciparum protein kinases and validate these kinases as targets for drug development. Working closely with the malaria drug discovery community we will not only offer training in dissecting the biology of the malaria parasite but also in the investigation of the suitability of targets for drug discovery. This PhD is built from the successful validation of the malaria protein kinase PfCLK3 (Alam et al. Science (2019) 365, eaau1682) which we determined not only to be essential for the correct processing of RNA but also when inhibited rapidly killed the parasite at multiple stages in a manner that indicated the potential of PfCLK3 as a therapeutic target. Using PfCLK3 as our exemplar we are now investigating the potential of other protein kinase targets which emerged from our global study of essential malaria protein kinases (Solyakov et al. Nature communications (2011) 2, 565).