Buenos Aires to Dundee for African parasite research

Karina Mariño, one of the University's newest postdoctoral researchers, has joined a major project to develop new medicines for treating some of the world's most deadly tropical diseases.

Karina tells Contact of hopes her work will make some progress to combating the deadly disease African Sleeping Sickness.

Karina Valeria Mariño always knew she'd be a scientist. In High School she loved the idea of understanding the world in a "molecular" way and went on to become a "Licenciada" in Chemical Sciences (the equivalent of a five-year Master degree in Chemistry) at the University of Buenos Aires.

It was during the last two years of her undergraduate degree, while on a student fellowship, that she discovered the world of parasites while researching a disease endemic in South America, American Trypanosomiasis. A fellowship from the National Research Council of Argentina funded her PhD research, allowing Karina to delve even deeper into the underlying actions of parasitic infections.

Experience gained through her research in South America and her skills as an organic chemist will now be built on in Dundee as she starts postdoctoral research into another parasite-causing disease - African Sleeping Sickness.

African Sleeping Sickness is a fatal disease that threatens more than 60 million people in 36 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. There are no vaccines for the disease and the drugs used to treat it are toxic.

"Sleeping sickness is endemic in sub-Saharan Africa and is fatal if not treated, but the front line arsenical drug, melarsoprol, is so poisonous that it kills five per cent of patients receiving treatment," one of the project's lead researchers, Professor Mike Ferguson, said.

Professor Ferguson is one of a team of scientists in the School of Life Sciences who were last year awarded £8.1 million from the Wellcome Trust to develop a programme of drug discovery to treat some of the world's most neglected tropical diseases, including African Sleeping Sickness. Professors Alan Fairlamb, Bill Hunter, Ian Gilbert, Julie Frearson, Daan van Aalten, Paul Wyatt and Dr Ruth Brenk work alongside Professor Ferguson on the programme.

Karina will work in Professor Ferguson laboratory, where she will investigate enzymes produced by the African Sleeping Sickness parasite Trypanosoma brucei in the hope of finding an enzyme that could be targeted by antiparasitic drugs.

"This project represents a completely new horizon for me as a scientist. It opens the gate of molecular biology techniques and will help me to develop as an interdisciplinary researcher," Karina said.

"As an organic chemist I am used to a "chemical approach" to biological problems. Professor Ferguson's laboratory is investigating parasitology but has a wide scope of research starting from structural studies to define cell surface molecules responsible for parasite survival, through gene knockout approaches to identify biosynthetic enzymes, to drug discovery."

"This makes it an excellent place for interdisciplinary research."

Karina's experience and skills in chemistry will be an asset to the project and the new techniques she learns at Dundee will further progress her research into African Sleeping Sickness.

"Very little progress has been made in the development of new and effective treatments for African Sleeping Sickness," Karina said.

"The recent publication of the genetic sequence of T. brucei is a significant research advance in the quest for therapeutic and vaccine targets, but post-genomic and additional molecular and functional genomic information is needed to now work out what the genes do."

"For example, genes that code for diverse enzymes have been identified, but the function or role of these enzymes is not completely understood. My project will investigate some of these enzymes in the hope that one might be identified which could be used as a drug target and possibly, one day, a cure will be found."

Professor Ferguson commented, "I am delighted to have Karina join my laboratory. Karina was trained by my distinguished colleague Professor Rosa de Lederkremer in Argentina and comes with the 'Lederkremer seal of approval' - I look forward to a productive collaboration!"