Department of Infectious Diseases
Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases
2019- Present
Kyle Lab Research
In January 2020, I joined Dr. Dennis Kyle’s lab and upon return to lab after quarantine in June 2020, I began developing my project based on expanding current methods of examining Artemisinin resistance in Plasmodium falciparum to include the evasive, drug-induced dormant forms. Dormancy is an innate survival mechanism seen across taxa and Plasmodium falciparum, a major public health concern and pathogen responsible for malaria, utilizes dormancy to evade drug pressure and other noxious external stimuli. Once drug pressure is removed, the parasite later recrudesces to cause recurrent infections that facilitate the acquisition and spread of resistance genes. Mechanisms underlying selection pressure of genes conferring Artemisinin resistance and the interaction of the innate survival mechanism of dormancy on the acquisition of inheritable resistance remains elusive. My dissertation aims to optimize and utilize novel high-content imaging and microscopy methods to elaborate on the dormancy phenotypes and recovery timeline of Artemisinin-induced dormant parasites.
Presentations
a. Mendiola, V. “Visualization and quantification of Artemisinin induced dead and dormant Plasmodium falciparum”. [Poster]. CTEGD 2022 Symposium. Athens, GA. 2022.
b. Mendiola, V. “Visualization and quantification of Artemisin-induced dead and dormant Plasmodium falciparum”. [Talk]. Gordon Research Conference: Biology of Host-Parasite Interactions 2022. Newport, RI. 2022.
Collaborative Work
Manestch Lab
Early into my training in the Kyle lab, I had the opportunity to collaborate with the Manestch lab at Northeastern University examining novel mono- and bis-peroxide bridged Artemisinin dimers and their effect on Plasmodium in vitro. For this project I contributed by performing an extended version of the standard and morphological based ring-stage survival assay (RSA) using the synthesized compounds. My results validated that bis-peroxide derived artemisinin dimers are similarly, if not slightly more, potent than their mono-peroxide analogs. These results also contributed to the conclusion that the potency of the Artemisinin dimers does not rely on the number of peroxide bridges and only a singular peroxide bridge is necessary for antimalarial activity.
a. Lichorowic, C.L., Zhao, Y., Maher, S.P., Padin-Irizarry, V., Mendiola, V.C., de Castro, S. T., Worden, J. A., Casandra, D., Kyle, D. E., Manetsch, R. (2021). Synthesis of Mono- and Bisperoxide-Bridged Artemisinin Dimers to Elucidate the Contribution of Dimerization to Antimalarial Activity. ACS Infect. Dis.; 7,7,2013-2024.
