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Malaria is a
disease than has been considered a public health problem in
Ecuador, however, during the last 3 years, an important
investment in control programs has resulted in a decrease in
the number of cases reported. In spite of the success of
this strategy, the most important weakness for the complete
elimination of this disease is the lack of key information
about its biology. One of the main unknown aspects of this
disease is the distribution, abundance and transmission
implication of the anophelines in Ecuador. It is our
interest to investigate the biological features of the
different species of vectors implicated in transmission.
The first step to get this goal is to determine de species
de Anopheles mosquitos circulanting in endemic
provinces for Malaria that have evidenced a change in the
transmission dynamics of the disease. This classification is
planned to be done by morphologic and molecular features and
additionally, it will include a description of the
ecological features of the breeding places.
Summary of research
interests:
Malaria is a disease
that affects 300-500 million people each year. Resistance to
antimalarials is widespread and new antimalarials are needed
to continue the fight against this disease.
Relative to Asia and Africa, malaria drug
resistance is less studied in Latin America and information
from Ecuador is severely lacking.
My main research interests are the study of drug resistance
in Ecuadorian isolates of Plasmodium falciparum and
Plasmodium vivax and the discovery of new
antimalarials that have activity in different life cycle
stages of the malaria parasite.
My long term aim is
to set the ground for new malaria research
projects in Ecuador and most importantly to improve the way
malaria is treated in the country to achieve complete cure
and prevent resistance.
For this purpose, I am establishing a basic
laboratory environment that allows us to culture P.
falciparum and P. vivax isolates in vitro
and to perform drug sensitivity assays to compare them with
standard laboratory strains. In addition, molecular biology
techniques are being used to determine drug resistance
genotypes in the two main human malaria parasites. Our aim
is to determine if Ecuadorian isolates of P. falciparum
and P. vivax are resistant to chloroquine,
sulfadoxine pyrimethamine, artemisinin derivatives and other
drugs currently in use and to evaluate natural product
extracts and new drug in late lead optimization programs for
efficacy against drug resistant malaria in Ecuador. This
will serve not only to enhance the development of these
drugs but also increase the understanding of potentially
novel drug resistance mechanisms in this understudied region
of the world.
Short summary:
My research focuses on understanding of the
status of drug resistance in Plasmodium falciparum
and P. vivax in Ecuador as well as in the discovery
of new compounds that can cure malaria infections. My main
objective is to enhance the way malaria is treated in the
country and to help in the development of new drugs that
will ultimately serve in the eradication of this disease.
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