Artur Scherf

Malaria remains a major global health problem due to the increasing spread of drug resistance and more than 400,000 deaths per year. New drugs that target multidrug resistant parasites are of highest priority. The […]

Malaria is a tropical disease due to a parasite named Plasmodium. It is a global health problem, still causing more than 450.000 deaths each year (mostly African children) and over 200 million infections (http://www.who.int/malaria/en/). […]

A thousand fold improvement of an antiviral activity The starting point of this project was the modest activity displayed by compounds 1 and 2, on the phenotypic Measles-based antiviral assay designed by Pierre-Olivier Vidalain […]

During the past year, using a murine model for experimental cerebral malaria (ECM), we pursued our investigation regarding the contribution of the allergic inflammatory response in the pathogenesis of malaria disease. Following the demonstration […]

Although PfEMP1/var is studied in many laboratories in the world, a number of key questions remain unknown. By analysing a mutant parasite (D10) with a chromosome 9 deletion and loss of adhesion, we linked […]

  Our basic research on virulence gene control revealed that epigenetic factors such as histone methylation control antigenic variation but also the developmental progression of malaria parasites during the complex life cycle in the […]

  Fig. 2: Transmission electron micrograph of an iRBC (schizont). Nucleus shown in blue. Only few factors that interact with the DNA of P. falciparum have been identified and the recruitment of specific factors […]

  The protozoan pathogen P. falciparum undergoes antigenic variation to establish persistent blood stage infection. Several clonally variant gene families undergo antigenic variation in P. falciparum and are expressed during blood stage infection at […]

The Leitmotif of the BIHP research group can be summarized as follows: “From basic research to new intervention strategies against malaria parasites”. The teams investigate various topics related to blood stage infection such as […]