Vandana Thathy
about
Vandana is a molecular parasitologist with a passion for studying the interactions between malaria parasites and their hosts. She undertook her PhD at New York University School of Medicine, where, under the mentorship of Drs. Robert Ménard and Victor Nussenzweig, she helped develop gene targeting techniques in Plasmodium berghei and used these to examine the structure-function relationships of two parasite-specific proteins. After completing a postdoctoral period Dr. Kami Kim’s laboratory at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine working on subtilisin-like serine proteases of Toxoplasma gondii, Vandana decided to return to Kenya, the country of her birth, to pursue her career in malaria research. She undertook a research fellowship from the National Research Council-Ellison Medical Foundation at the U.S. Army Medical Research Unit based in Kisumu, western Kenya, where she worked on human complement receptor 1 polymorphisms and their association with resistance to severe Plasmodium falciparum malaria under the mentorship of Dr. José Stoute. Subsequently, Vandana joined Prof. Kevin Marsh’s group at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme-Kilifi where she was engaged in basic science research capacity strengthening in a multifaceted research group that was investigating the targets, regulation and consequences of human immunity to malaria. It was here that she developed a strong interest in variant surface antigens of P. falciparum and their role in immunity and pathogenesis. She held a five-year Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellowship in Public Health and Tropical Medicine during which she developed a program of work to examine whether the Plasmodium interspersed repeat (pir) gene superfamily of P. falciparum (i.e. the rif and stevor multigene families) contributes to the pathogenic and antigenic properties of infected red blood cells using various approaches, including next generation sequencing, targeted transcriptomics, recombinant protein expression and immunoprofiling. Most recently, Vandana spent two and a half years in the laboratory of Prof. Chris Newbold at the University of Oxford, UK, where she worked on the application of functional genomics and genetic tools to help advance the understanding of the biology and significance of the pir gene superfamily in the pathogenesis of and development of immunity to malaria caused by P. falciparum. Vandana joined the laboratory of Dr. David Fidock at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, in September 2019.