Thomas E. Wellems

National Institutes of Health


Primary Section: 44, Microbial Biology
Secondary Section: 61, Animal, Nutritional, and Applied Microbial Sciences
Membership Type:
Member (elected 2007)

Research Interests

My research interests are in two areas of malaria biology: (1) the interactions between Plasmodium parasites and human host tissues that affect the severity of disease, and (2) the molecular events of drug responses and drug resistance that determine antimalarial treatment outcomes. In the second of these areas, my colleagues and I study the mechanism of a transporter responsible for chloroquine resistance (PfCRT) and structure-activity relationships relevant to the discovery of new antimalarial drugs. In the first area, we work on the genetics of P. falciparum virulence and investigate human hemoglobin mutations that can alter the cytoadherence properties of parasitized red blood cells. Research on P. falciparum virulence to different primates is producing new information on invasion molecules involved in the specificity of malaria parasites for red blood cells. In studies of malaria protection by hemoglobin mutations, our findings indicate that altered forms of hemoglobin can interfere with functions of the major variable adherence molecule (PfEMP-1) inserted by P. falciparum in the membrane of its host red blood cell. We are exploring whether this interference can ameliorate disease severity by reducing inflammatory events from the sequestration of parasitized red cells in host blood vessels.

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