Our current research interest is focused on the invasion machinery of the Plasmodium parasite, the causative agent of Malaria, leading to 300-500 million infections per year and more than 1 million deaths worldwide.

The complex life cycle of the Plasmodium parasite requires traversing various membranes and even changing hosts. An infected female Anopheles Mosquito injects sporozoites into the human host, which then invade liver cells. After transforming into the blood-stage, the newly formed merozoites are released into the blood cycle and invade erythrocytes, where the parasites are mostly invisible to the human immune system. Only during the rupture of the erythrocytes following the release of multiplied merozoites, the immune system reacts, leading to the typical symptoms of malaria, e.g. fever, flu-like symptoms, headache. An uninfected Anopheles mosquito can then ingest gametocytes during a blood meal of an infected human and close the lifecycle of the parasite.

The invasion machinery, which is required to traverse host membranes is well conserved throughout the genus Apicomplexa including e.g. Toxoplasma and Cryptosporidium. Our aim is to gain structural insights via X-ray crystallography into the interacting partners of the invasion machinery. Based on our structural studies we try to identify novel compounds which render the interaction between these partners impossible, leading perhaps to a novel drug-like compound for future use in Malaria prevention and therapeutic treatment.