Dr. Gordon Awandare
Current Mentees
Dr. Daniel Kiboi
Dr. Daniel Kiboi
Daniel studied Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at JKUAT, Kenya. His postgraduate research focused on selecting and identifying molecular markers associated with antimalarial drugs piperaquine and lumefantrine resistance in rodent malaria parasites Plasmodium berghei. His study mapped promising mutations in proteins that are highly plausible candidates for mediators of drug action/resistance. During his PhD training, he visited Drs Oliver and Julian lab at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. He trained on transfection work using gene knockout and epitope tagging, PlasmoGEM vectors for P. berghei and their application in validating resistance markers/drug transporters/targets. He later established and continued with the P. berghei transfection in KEMRI, Nairobi. Daniel joined the KEMRI-WTRP, Kilifi in 2016 as PostDoc under the WACCBIP Programme. His expanded focus is validating Plasmodium proteins associated not only with drug resistance but also to genes of interest in malaria immunity using both PlasmoGEM resources and CRISPR/Cas9 system.
Past Mentees
Dr. Awandare’s research focuses on the pathogenesis of Plasmodium falciparum malaria in children. There are two main branches of investigations, namely the role of the host immune response on one hand, and the mechanisms used by the parasite to propagate itself and cause disease. From the perspective of the host, we have been investigating the production of inflammatory mediators and the relationship between genetic variation in innate immune response genes and susceptibility to severe malaria in children. Our research on the Plasmodium parasite is aimed at gaining a better understanding of the mechanisms used for invasion of red blood cells. Therefore, a substantial aspect of our research efforts focus on characterizing the sialic acid-independent pathways of invasion and identifying novel receptors and ligands involved.
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