Biology

Prof. Deepak Gaur
School of Biotechnology Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) New Delhi

Absract:

Erythrocyte invasion by Plasmodium falciparum parasites is central to malaria pathogenesis. Thus, it is critical to understand this intricate biological process for the development of novel malaria intervention strategies. P. falciparum erythrocyte invasion is a complex, multistep process that is mediated by a number of redundant ligand-receptor interactions. Previous leading blood-stage antigens such as AMA-1 and MSP-1 were known to play an essential role in the invasion process but exhibited a high degree of antigenic polymorphisms that prevented heterologous protective efficacy of their antibodies and thus led to sub-optimal protection in clinical trials. Extensive research on elucidating the molecular basis of erythrocyte invasion by malaria parasites over three decades has aimed at identifying an essential parasite ligand that could be targeted across multiple heterologous parasite strains. In this regard, my group has identified a crucial multiprotein complex (PfRH5/Ripr/CyRPA) that is essential for erythrocyte invasion and demonstrated to be a novel potent vaccine target, which overcome the previous challenges of blood-stage vaccines (antigen diversity, redundancy, cross-reactivity against heterologous strains), paving the way forward to develop new generation blood stage malaria vaccines. These new developments from my laboratory as well as at the global stage on malaria vaccine development will be presented and discussed during my seminar.