Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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S6: Drugs & Drug Resistance Symposium sponsored by Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics, Griffith University
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Malaria drug discovery and target identification – from gene editing to AI tools 1Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia.; 2School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia. Malaria causes significant morbidity and mortality, with 282 million cases and 610,000 deaths in 2024. The past decade has seen progress towards malaria eradication, however recent trends indicate that improvements have plateaued, partly due to parasite drug-resistance and treatment failure. To combat parasite drug resistance, new drugs with different modes of action to current antimalarials are needed. We have identified novel antiplasmodial compounds from synthetic and natural product libraries and using machine learning/AI tools. This includes the indoloquinolizidine alkaloid natural product alstonine (PfIC50 of 0.18 µM, Selectivity Index (SI) >1,000), novel 1,3,4-oxadiazoles (e.g., 3 with PfIC50 0.16 µM, SI 162) and primary hydroxamates (e.g., ACY-738 with PfIC50 0.08 µM, SI 314). In this presentation, an overview will be given on strategies employed to identify these compounds and to understand their antiplasmodial action, including phenotypic analyses and using CRISPR/Cas9 mediated approaches to investigate putative targets. Elucidating the mechanism of action of antiplasmodial compounds can help identify novel druggable targets, inform downstream drug development and aid in improving our understanding Plasmodium biology. | ||