Elizabeth Winzeler

Biosketch

Elizabeth Winzeler, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics in School of Medicine and an Associate Dean for Research and Innovation in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of California, San Diego. Dr. Winzeler grew up in Reno, Nevada. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences and Art from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon in 1984. After a brief hiatus working as a software developer and programmer, she returned to academia and obtained an MS at Oregon State in Corvallis, Oregon and her Ph.D. from the Stanford University Department of Developmental Biology, studying DNA replication in Caulobacter crescentus with Lucy Shapiro. She completed postdoctoral studies with the yeast geneticist, Ron Davis, in the Stanford Department of Biochemistry where she was one of the first researchers to exploit the availability of whole genome sequences in experimental research in yeast. In 1999 she moved to San Diego to take up a joint appointment at Scripps Research Institute and the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation. There she moved away from yeast but used her background in yeast functional genomics to develop a malaria program that resulted in several large, public antimalarial molecule collections as well as the discovery of several novel antimalarial chemotypes, two of which have now progressed to late-stage clinical trials (cipargamin and ganaplacide). She also developed the computational and genetic methods and collaborative network that resulted in the discovery of many of the import

Research Interests

Elizabeth Winzeler's research focuses on disease caused by eukaryotic pathogens with a primary interest in malaria. She aims to develop better medications for the treatment and eradication of malaria. To address this aim, she uses multifaceted experimental approaches which may include fields of chemical biology, drug discovery, genetics, functional genomics, the use of model systems, population biology, medicinal chemistry, bioinformatics and cheminformatics. When possible, she uses data-intensive methods to find solutions to global health problems, such as how to suppress the emergence of drug resistance in pathogens through the design of better drugs, or how to find comprehensive ways to predict which genetic changes are likely to be associated with emerging drug resistance. Her work on identifying the genetic basis of acquired drug resistance using genomic methods in different species has led to insight into general mechanisms of resistance and shown that these general mechanisms are often conserved across species.