Fellow

Sanjeev Krishna is Professor of Molecular Parasitology and Medicine at St George’s Hospital Medical School. Sanjeev Krishna undertakes high quality laboratory-based cellular and molecular studies and carries this through into truly translational research. His major impact has been in the molecular studies of membrane transport in malaria. Through this work transporters of Plasmodium Falciparum have become validated drug targets. He cloned and expressed a hexose transporter from Plasmodium falciparum and identified a specific inhibitor of this transporter which kills parasites in cultures and in animal models. This is likely to lead to a new class of antimalarial drugs. He defined the function of a SERCA type calcium ATPase and has shown that this is the target of the artemisinin antimalarials. Throughout this time Sanjeev Krishna has continued his work on acute malaria in the field setting and made seminal contributions to the management of severely ill patients in terms of fluid and electrolyte balance and the treatment of lactic acidosis. He has also overcome practical problems associated with difficult routes of administration, for example by re-introducing the use of intramuscular quinine allowing rapid initiation of treatment in the field. He is now working on proteomic signatures of the neglected disease of sleeping sickness.