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del Portillo Obando, Hernando A.
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ICREA Research Professor at CRESIB (Centre de Recerca de Salut Internacional de Barcelona). Life & Medical Sciences
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I studied molecular aspects of parasites at the University of Georgia where I received my Ph.D. in 1985, followed by two postdoctoral trainings at the New York University Medical Center and the Institut Pasteur where I specialized in molecular biology of malaria parasites. Since then, I have pursued molecular studies in malaria trying to unveil the mechanisms of virulence, drug resistance and the establishment of chronic infections to develop rational control strategies. I spent 15 years of my professional life in Brasil where I consolidated a multi-Centric and Inter-disciplinary malaria programme. The cornerstone of this research activity has been the discovery of the largest subtelomeric multigene variant and virulent family in Plasmodium vivax malaria proposed to be involved in a new spleen immune evasion mechanism. I joined CRESIB as an ICREA Research professor in 2007 with the specific objective of discovering new antigens for vaccine development and new drugs against P. vivax
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Research Interests
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1. Vaccine development: we are using cell-free expression systems to bind large number of malarial proteins to protein chips and/or suspension array technology. These arrays are use in assays with human inmune sera to look for correlates of clinical protection. We are also studying the role of the spleen in reticulocyte-prone non-lethal malaria to identify ligands/receptors. 2. Antigenic variation/cytoadherence in P. vivax: we have discovered the largest subtelomeric variant multigene family of human malaria parasites and are interested in discovering its role in immune evasion and cytoadherence. 3. Functional Studies in P. vivax Malaria: we are interested in functionally characterizing genes of P. vivax through heterologous transfection in P. falciparum and in developing a continuous in vitro culture systems to enable reverse genetics of P. vivax. 4. Drug discovery: We collaborate with a multi-disciplinary and Multi-Centric Spaniard collaborative group to use structural biology to accelerate drug discovery in malaria.
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KeyWords
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Malaria, Plasmodium vivax, vaccine development, drug discovery
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