PhD Studentship (Fixed Term)

Project Title: Turning the Malaria Parasite's Protein Degradation Machinery Against It -Professor Katerina Artavanis-Tsakonas, co-supervised with Laura Itzhaki (Department of Pharmacology) Malaria remains a major global health challenge, with drug resistance threatening the effectiveness of existing treatments. This project will explore a fundamentally different way to kill malaria parasites: harnessing their own protein-degradation machinery to selectively destroy proteins they need to survive. Our lab studies how the ubiquitin system works in Plasmodium falciparum, revealing important differences between parasite and human cells that could be exploited therapeutically. This project will combine parasite genetics, biochemistry and chemical biology to develop new ways of manipulating protein stability.