Characterization of potential drug targeting folate transporter proteins from Eukaryotic Pathogens

Name	World Continuing Education Alliance
Activity Title	Characterization of potential drug targeting folate transporter proteins from Eukaryotic Pathogens
Details	A heterogeneous diversity of eukaryotic pathogens is responsible for the most economically important diseases of humans and animals. A metabolic pathway that has been exploited considerably for the development of drugs is the folate biosynthetic pathway. In addition to the folate biosynthesis pathway, proteins that mediate transport of useful nutrients such as folic acid have been identified as important chemotherapeutic drug targets. Proteins that mediate transportation of folates have been well studied in a few parasites such as. Therefore, in an attempt to identify and characterize targets for novel therapeutics, we report herein an extensive search of folate transporters from pathogen genomes. In addition, we investigated the evolutionary relationship of these transporters in a bid to determine similarities and differences that make them attractive drug targets. The knowledge provided may assist in the design of new antifolates for protozoan parasites. Objectives Course Objective : Medically important pathogens are responsible for the death of millions every year. For many of these pathogens, there are limited options for therapy and resistance to commonly used drugs is fast emerging. The availability of genome sequences of many eukaryotic microbes is providing critical biological information for understanding parasite biology and identifying new drug and vaccine targets.. : We developed automated search strategies in the Eukaryotic Pathogen Database Resources (EuPathDB) to construct a protein list and retrieve protein sequences of folate transporters encoded in the genomes of 200 eukaryotic microbes. The folate transporters were categorized according to features including mitochondrial localization, number of transmembrane helix, and protein sequence relatedness..
Competence	Internal Medicine
Start Date	<span class="not-set">(not set)</span>
End Date	<span class="not-set">(not set)</span>
Event Time	08:30 AM
Location	World Continuing Education Alliance eLearning System
Cost (UGX)	0
CPD Points	1