Special Seminar – Prof. Dr. Petra Rohrbach
It is our great pleasure to welcome Prof. Dr. Petra Rohrbach from McGill University (Québec) and announce her special seminar as part of the Immunological Colloquium of the Medical Immunology Campus Erlangen. Her talk on “Malaria extracellular vesicles: decoding their message in the human host” will be hosted on the 19th of May at 12:30 PM in the seminar room of the Institute of Microbiology (Wasserturmstr. 3/5, 91054 Erlangen).
Dr. Petra Rohrbach is an Associate Professor at McGill University’s Institute of Parasitology. Her research primarily focuses on malaria, specifically the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and its complex life cycle within the human host. She aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of the molecular and cellular processes of the parasite’s digestive vacuole, a specialized acidic organelle responsible for hemoglobin degradation, nutrient uptake, detoxification, and ion homeostasis.
One of the main objectives of Dr. Rohrbach’s research program is to explore the functions and mechanisms of the transporters located on the digestive vacuole membrane, namely the multi-drug transporter PfMDR1 and the chloroquine resistance transporter PfCRT. These transporters are crucial for drug resistance, and their full characterization and substrate identification are still ongoing. By utilizing modern imaging techniques tailored to Plasmodium falciparum, Dr. Rohrbach’s lab aims to enhance our understanding of drug resistance mechanisms and the underlying biology of the digestive vacuole. In her talk, she will present novel insights regarding the encrypted information in extracellular vesicles and share the latest findings in this critical area of research and its potential implications for malaria treatment and prevention.
