Targeting a mammalian host metabolic pathway for improved chemotherapy against the foodborne pathogen Toxoplasma gondii
Join us for a public lecture by Silvia N. J. Moreno, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Cellular Biology, and Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases, University of Georgia
February 11, 2015 @ 1:00pm
Coverdell Center, Room 175
University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Reception to follow
Silvia N. J. Moreno completed her undergraduate and graduate training in chemistry at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She moved to the United States as an NIH-post-doctoral fellow to work at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. After several years working on the chemistry of free radicals, she became interested in protozoan parasites. Moreno joined Dr. George Cross’s laboratory as a postdoctoral research associate to work on the biochemistry of Trypanosoma brucei. She became professor of parasitology at the department of pathobiology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2005, she moved to the University of Georgia as professor of cellular biology.
Dr. Moreno’s laboratory is interested in metabolic pathways that could be used as targets for chemotherapy against Toxoplasma gondii and other protozoan parasites. Recent findings from her laboratory revealed an exchange of metabolites between the host cell and T. gondii favoring parasite growth. This complex metabolic interaction between parasites and their hosts quite possibly interferes with effective chemotherapy. She proposes a double-hit strategy by targeting both host and parasite pathways as a potential synergistic approach to be used not only against Toxoplasma but also against other apicomplexan parasites.
Sponsored by the University of Georgia Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute, biomed.uga.edu.
onehealth.uga.edu | Follow OneHealth on Twitter @OneHealth_UGA