Dr Kathryn Wicht

Research Officer

Affiliations

  1. Research Fellow, Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine
  2. Holistic Drug Discovery and Development (H3D) Centre
  3. Medical Biotechnology and Immunotherapy Research Unit (MB&I)

Key Expertise

Drug Discovery, Drug Resistance, Malaria, Parasitic Infection

Main Research Focus

Kathryn’s work is currently focused on the mechanisms of action and resistance of Plasmodium kinase and hemozoin formation inhibitors, in development as potential novel antimalarials. Her goals are to build platforms at UCT for studying drug targets and resistance of African-relevant malaria parasite strains, as well as performing genome editing of Plasmodium parasites. She is part of the academic Plasmodium Cell Culture Laboratory.

Most Significant Paper Authored in 2024

2,8-Disubstituted-1,5-naphthyridines as dual inhibitors of Plasmodium falciparum phosphatidylinositol-4-kinase and hemozoin formation with in vivo efficacy.

Dziwornu, G. A., Seanego, D., Fienberg, S., Clements, M., Ferreira, J., Sypu, V. S., Samanta, S., Bhana, A. D., Korkor, C. M., Garnie, L. F., Teixeira, N., Wicht, K. J., Taylor, D., Olckers, R., Njoroge, M., Gibhard, L., Salomane, N., Wittlin, S., Mahato, R., Chakraborty, A., Sevilleno, N., Coyle, R., Lee, M. C. S., Godoy, L. C., Pasaje, C. F., Niles, J. C., Reader, J., van der Watt, M., Birkholtz, L.-M., Bolscher, J. M., de Bruijni, M. H. C., Coulson, L. B., Basarab, G. S., Ghorpade, S. R., & Chibale, K. (2024).

This work showed the medicinal chemistry optimisation and target profiling of a series of compounds targeting both a Plasmodium kinase, PI4K, and the hemozoin formation pathway. This dual inhibition offers potential advantages when it comes to reducing the likelihood of the parasite developing resistance.