Research
— Research —
Research in the Fidock lab in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Columbia University in the City of New York focuses on the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. P. falciparum accounts for over six hundred thousand deaths annually with the majority of these being children under the age of five. Current drugs are rapidly failing, and there is an urgent need to design new drugs that are effective at killing the parasite while being cheap to produce. Chloroquine was once the drug of choice for treating malaria infections, but due to the spread of resistance it is now only used in a handful of countries. Our lab focuses on many aspects of parasite biology, including the genetic and molecular basis of antimalarial drug resistance in P. falciparum, antimalarial drug discovery, genetically attenuated parasite vaccines, and parasite lipid metabolism.
Awards
2016 Advance Global Australian of the Year in Life Sciences
2020 Winner of the ASTMH Trager Award in Molecular Parasitology
2020 Winner of the 2020 Project of the Year from the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV)
