Marine Drugs & Natural Products

Biography

I graduated from the Faculty of Medicine, Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1991 and was appointed Lecturer in Parasitology at the Faculty of Medicine Colombo. I did my MSc in Molecular Parasitology at the University of Salford in 1995 and was awarded the Overseas Research student Award to do my PhD. My postdoctoral training was in Prof John Hyde’s laboratory at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and I went on to work as a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocenter (MIB, University of Manchester). My work lead to the first annotated 2D gel maps for the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum and the development of a novel heavy isoleucine-based quantitative proteomic methodology to investigate the malarial proteome. I was appointed Senior Scientist at the Cancer Research UK Clinical Center at St James’s Hospital in, University of Leeds in 2007 where I worked on developing a novel label-free quantitative proteomics methodology to investigate formalin-fixed tissue archives. I took up my current role as Senior Lecturer at the University of Salford in April 2010.

Research Interest

Malaria continues to inflict a heavy mortality and morbidity burden with up to 3 million annual fatalities globally. Despite significant post-genomic technical advances, drug development has struggled compete with resistance acquisition. My research interests focus on drug discovery/screening and the development of proteomic/mass spectrometric methods to define mechanisms of antimalarial drug action. The emergence of resistance to the current frontline drug Artemisinin and the absence of affordable alternatives in the developmental pipeline make it imperative to explore new options for antimalarial drug discovery. The Malaria Proteomics Laboratory at the University of Salford is currently screening a range of compounds for potential antimalarial properties. The main areas of investigation are summarized below: Drug repositioning or re-purposing, whereby existing FDA approved drugs already used in other diseases are screened for antimalarial activity. The strategy affords a fast tracked route to discover new antimalarial options as well as synergistic compounds which could be used in combination with current frontline drugs impede the progress of resistance. Fluorescence-based in vitro drug susceptibility assays optimized in the laboratory are used in the preliminary screens. A second research strategy focuses on the investigation of a range of natural product options for antimalarial efficacy. A collaborative project with the National Institute for Pharmaceutical research and development (NIPRD, Nigeria) is currently exploring a series of ‘traditional fever cures’ for in vitro antimalarial activity. Potential leads are taken forward for bioassay guided fractionation and active compound isolation. Fractionation end points will be guided by proteomic/mass spectrometric parameters to improve on currently available drug susceptibility assays which are largely reliant on parasite death, a crude and late measure of antimalarial efficacy.