Saurabh D Patel

I am enthusiastic about applying the structural biology techniques I learned during my PhD to the global health problem of malaria, a cause of especially high fatality rates among children. I am an academic physician scientist devoting the majority of my time to the understanding of the molecular details of erythrocyte invasion by the P. falciparum parasite with the goal of developing a blood-stage vaccine for malaria. During my PhD training in the lab of Lawrence Shapiro, I solved the structure of the resistin family of proteins (molecules that have been implicated in type II diabetes), and several type II cadherins (proteins that are important for cell adhesion in the spinal cord). I completed the accelerated research pathway of General Pediatrics Residency at Mattel Children’s Hospital of UCLA in Los Angeles, CA, did advanced clinical training in Pediatric Gastroenterology at Boston Children’s Hospital. Under the mentorship of Dr. Stephen Harrison and Dr. Dyann Wirth, I optimized the expression of a well-folded recombinant PfRH5, an essential invasion ligands expressed by P. falciparum, the causative agent of the most deadly form of malaria.