Marin Science Seminar Presentation: "When Parasites Kill: Changing antimalarial drug sensitivities in Uganda" (October 18, 2017)

Malaria, a disease caused by an intracellular parasite, is a serious global health concern. The eradication of Plasmodium falciparum, the most lethal of the human malaria species, is hindered by drug resistance. With the recent emergence of drug resistance to the current first lines of defense to malaria in Southeast Asia, efforts to not only develop new antimalarials but also continue drug resistance surveillance around the world are crucial to malaria control and eradication. Sub-Saharan Africa contains the bulk of the world’s malaria cases, so the emergence or spread of drug resistance to Africa would be detrimental to control efforts. We study the complexities of drug resistance present in Eastern Uganda where there is a high prevalence of falciparum malaria.

Stephanie Rasmussen holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and a Master’s degree in Biology from Dominican University of California. Her graduate work was on falciparum malaria drug resistance in Uganda. She recently returned from her third summer of malaria field work in Tororo, Uganda and is currently a research associate between the labs of Roland Cooper and Philip Rosenthal of Dominican University and UC San Francisco, respectively, working on a project studying the molecular markers of drug resistance to antimalarials in the development pipeline.