Danny Wilson

Biography

Half of the world’s population is at risk of infection with mosquito-borne malaria parasites of the genus Plasmodium. These complex eukaryotic parasites that live inside human cells cause widespread sickness and death throughout tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world including countries neighbouring Australia. The majority of the >400,000 malaria related deaths that occur each year are caused by the parasite Plasmodium falciparum in children under 5 years in Africa, Asia and South America. Unfortunately, resistance has developed to our most effective anti-malarial drugs, resulting in poorer treatment outcomes for clinical cases of this deadly parasite. There is an urgent need to identify novel drugs to partner with current first-line treatments to fill this looming treatment gap. In addition, development of an effective vaccine would reduce the burden of disease and greatly facilitate efforts to eradicate malaria. Unfortunately, a highly effective vaccine to protect against malaria has not been developed to date and efforts to identify the best vaccine targets are ongoing. My laboratory seeks to identify and characterise novel parasite proteins for their suitability as both drug and vaccine targets. We focus on invasion of the human red blood cell by the small invasive merozoite stage of the parasite lifecycle as a therapeutic target. By developing therapeutics (drugs and vaccines) that inhibit merozoite invasion of the red blood cell we can instantly disrupt the lifecycle of the parasite in the stage that causes all the symptoms of the disease. We apply a breakthrough P. falciparum merozoite purification method (PNAS, 2010) that is superior to alternatives for studying malaria parasite invasion biology, opening up new opportunities to study this previously intractable lifecycle stage

Research Interest

Medicine,Medical Education,Research,etc