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SUMMARY:Modelling drug action on parasites during blood stage Plasmodium i
 nfection.
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20180712T003000Z
DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20180712T005000Z
DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20210228T010200Z
UID:indico-contribution-295@conferences.maths.unsw.edu.au
DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Rosemary Aogo (Kirby Institute\, UNSW\, Sydney)\nThe
  artemisinins are our most effective class of antimalarials\, and are the 
 internationally recommended drugs for treating malaria. This class of anti
 malarials has been an important factor in reducing mortality due to malari
 a globally. However\, the emergence of resistance to this most effective a
 nd widely used class of antimalarials threatens this progress. Despite the
 ir high efficacy the artemisinins are known to have high treatment failure
  when used without a longer acting partner drug. It has been proposed that
  this may be due to a persisting population of parasites that goes dormant
  and emerge after drug pressure has waned. Further\, artemisinin resistant
  parasites have been studied and it has been found that they have an alter
 ed development pathway\, which protects parasites during treatment. More r
 ecently\, we have observed that a non-drug based stress can cause parasite
 s to mature more slowly\, highlighting the possibility that altering the d
 evelopmental cycle is a general survival strategy of the parasite. Hence\,
  we are interested in studying the development of parasites through their 
 life cycle with and without treatment and to quantify how drugs perturb no
 rmal development. Here\, we used a novel experimental system to track the 
 development of malaria parasites after being exposed to different antimala
 rials in mice. We do this by measuring the RNA and DNA content of parasite
 s over time. Using a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) and partial differential
  equations we attempt to determine what fraction of parasites had their li
 fe-cycle perturbed and whether perturbed parasites matured more slowly or 
 not at all.\nBy fitting the GMM to data and simulating the PDE model\, our
  preliminary results suggest that in the case of antimalarial drug treatme
 nt\, we have two distinct parasite populations. We observed a population w
 ith arrested maturation and a second population with slower maturation com
 pared to the untreated parasites. This work is ongoing\, but preliminary r
 esults indicate that antimalarial drugs completely arrest a proportion of 
 the exposed parasites\, and alter the maturation of the surviving populati
 on.\n\nhttps://conferences.maths.unsw.edu.au/event/2/contributions/295/
LOCATION:University of Sydney New Law School/--020
URL:https://conferences.maths.unsw.edu.au/event/2/contributions/295/
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