Dinkorma Ouologuem
Country (Nationality)
Mali
Grantee Title
Project: Development of an ex-vivo transmission blocking assay for clinical isolates of matured Plasmodium falciparum gametocytes through membrane feeding assays
Grantee Description
Dinkorma Toure Ouologuem is an Associate Professor of Cell biology at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Bamako, Mali. She is also working at the Malaria Research and Training Center of Mali. She has obtained her Ph.D. degree in Cell Biology from the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, USA in 2014 and her doctoral work focused on elucidating the fascinated mode of replication of Plasmodium parasite, using Toxoplasma as an experimentally tractable system.
Her goal as a researcher at the MRTC is to set up a research unit focusing on understanding the biology of malaria parasite transmission between the human host and the mosquito vector. She is also interested on the susceptibility of Plasmodium transmissible stages to therapeutic intervention.
Project: Development of an ex-vivo transmission blocking assay for clinical isolates of matured Plasmodium falciparum gametocytes through membrane feeding assays
The gametocyte project that she is embracing aims to develop an assay to measure the activity of antimalarial drugs on the transmission of the malaria parasite. The current tools for the assessment of gametocytocidal drug activity in vivo and in vitro are technically challenging. Besides, the existing experimental tools often rely on conventional laboratories adapted strains which may not be reflective of the plasmodial population circulating in malaria-endemic regions. The assay that she is developing will exploit Plasmodium gametocytes that will be isolated from malaria infected-volunteers blood. Parasites will be exposed ex-vivo to selected antimalarial drugs, and the transmission blocking capability will be evaluated using the gold standard mosquito feeding assay. This innovative work is anticipated to be a useful addition to the current tools for drug discovery and to support the malaria eradication agenda.