Dr. Elizabeth Winzeler, PhD | Associate Dean of Research & Innovation, Skaggs School of Pharmacy, University of California, San Diego
Professor bio:
Elizabeth Ann Winzeler is a Professor at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine where she is PI of the Winzeler lab. Her lab uses systematic, data intensive methods to solve problems at the interface of host pathogen biology typically involving large collections of chemical screening data and whole genome sequencing. She is also the program director of the Malaria Drug Accelerator (MalDA), a consortium of 18 different laboratories who have individually developed and maintained many of the platforms that contribute to early stage anti-malaria drug development including target discovery and validation. She is a fellow of the American Academy in Microbiology. She has published more than 200 publications. She has received awards from: the Keck Foundation, the Ellison Medical Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the 2014 Bailey-Ashford Medal, the 2017 Medicines of Malaria Venture Project of the year, the 2018 Alice and C.C. Wang Award, the 2018 William Trager Award, the 2020 Rady Children’s Hospital Awards of Excellence in Basic Research, the 2020 CSD Health Sciences Women Leadership Award and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021.
Abstract:
Over the last 20 years, we have seen remarkable progress in the search for next-generation malaria cures. Unfortunately, at the clinical level, malaria cases have continued to rise in some areas, demonstrating a persistent challenge. A major obstacle in reducing malaria cases has been the emergence of drug resistance in the parasite and, likely, insecticide resistance in the mosquito. In this talk, I will describe how we are leveraging transnational collaborative research to strengthen the early drug development pipeline. Additionally, I will discuss our efforts to study the emergence of drug resistance and apply machine learning to identify resistance alleles. Understanding these mechanisms may ultimately lead to the development of more effective small-molecule anti-infectives, cancer drugs, and agricultural products.
