Angana Mukherjee Research Assistant Professor

Research Interests:

Angana’s research is focused on the protozoan parasite species that causes the deadliest form of human malaria, Plasmodium falciparum. She is interested in understanding unique parasite biology with special importance on drug targets and genetic and molecular basis of drug resistance utilizing genetic, cell biology, biochemical and new molecular biology techniques.

Malaria is a tremendous burden to global public health, it’s among the top three infectious disease killers! This disease disproportionately affects the world’s poorest and the most vulnerable. Prevention and treatment of malaria are solely dependent upon administration of drugs since there is no licensed vaccine on the market.  But, because of the selection pressure of treating humans with drugs, the parasites always manage to evade the action of the drugs thereby eventually becoming resistant to every antimalarial drug, including the frontline and also the last resort, Artemisinin Combination therapy (ACT). Resistance to artemisinin, a component of ACT has emerged about a decade ago in Cambodia in Southeast Asia and is spreading to the west. One aspect of Angana’s research focuses on studying clinical field isolates from Southeast Asia at molecular levels. 

By using reverse genetics tools, inducible gene depletion approaches, CRISPR-Cas9 genome engineering she is additionally interested in exploring the parasite phosphoinositide lipid metabolism, the redox system and their roles in antimalarial drug resistance.

Biography:

• Research Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, IN 2020-Present
• Visiting Scientist: Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 2015-present
• Research Scientist, Centre de Recherche en Infectiologie, Université Laval, Québec, Canada 2015-2020
• Research Associate: Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 2012-2015
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre de Recherche en Infectiologie, Université Laval, Québec, Canada 2007-2012
• PhD, School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India 2007

Selected Recent Papers:

• Mukherjee A, Crochetière MÈ, Sergerie A, Amiar S, Thompson LA, Ebrahimzadeh Z, Gagnon D, Lauruol F, Bourgeois A, Galaup T, Roucheray S, Hallée S, Padmanabhan PK, Stahelin RV, Dacks JB, Richard D. A Phosphoinositide-Binding Protein Acts in the Trafficking Pathway of Hemoglobin in the Malaria Parasite Plasmodium falciparum. mBio. 2022 Jan 18:e0323921. doi: 10.1128/mbio.03239-21. Online ahead of print. PMID: 35038916
• Nima MK#, Mukherjee A#, Sazed SA, Hossainey MRH, Phru CS, Johora FT, Safeukui I, Saha A, Khan AA, Marma ASP, Ware RE, Mohandas N, Calhoun B, Haque R, Khan WA, Alam MS, Haldar K. # Equal contribution. Assessment of Plasmodium falciparum Artemisinin Resistance Independent of kelch13 Polymorphisms and with Escalating Malaria in Bangladesh. mBio. 2022 Jan 25:e0344421. doi: 10.1128/mbio.03444-21. Online ahead of print. PMID: 35073756
• Well-Tolerated Amphotericin B Derivatives That Effectively Treat Visceral Leishmaniasis. Morelle C, Mukherjee A, Zhang J, Fani F, Khandelwal A, Gingras H, Trottier J, Barbier O, Leprohon P, Burke MD, Ouellette M.
  ACS Infect Dis. 2021 Aug 13;7(8):2472-2482. doi: 10.1021/acsinfecdis.1c00245. Epub 2021 Jul 20. PMID: 34282886
• Coupling chemical mutagenesis to next generation sequencing for the identification of drug resistance mutations in Leishmania. Bhattacharya A, Leprohon P, Bigot S, Padmanabhan PK, Mukherjee A, Roy G, Gingras H, Mestdagh A, Papadopoulou B, Ouellette M.Nat Commun. 2019 Dec 9;10(1):5627. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-13344-6.PMID: 31819054
• Inactivation of Plasmepsins 2 and 3 Sensitizes Plasmodium falciparum to the Antimalarial Drug Piperaquine. Mukherjee A, Gagnon D, Wirth DF, Richard D.Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2018 Mar 27;62(4):e02309-17. doi: 10.1128/AAC.02309-17. Print 2018 Apr.PMID: 29439977
• Ebrahimzadeh Z, Mukherjee A, Crochetière MÈ, Sergerie A, Amiar S, Thompson LA, Gagnon D, Gaumond D, Stahelin RV, Dacks JB, Richard D. A pan-apicomplexan phosphoinositide-binding protein acts in malarial microneme exocytosis. EMBO Rep. 2019 Jun;20(6):e47102. doi: 10.15252/embr.201847102. Epub 2019 May 16.PMID: 31097469
• Bopp S, Magistrado P, Wong W, Schaffner SF, Mukherjee A, Lim P, Dhorda M, Amaratunga C, Woodrow CJ, Ashley EA, White NJ, Dondorp AM, Fairhurst RM, Ariey F, Menard D, Wirth DF, Volkman SK. Plasmepsin II-III copy number accounts for bimodal piperaquine resistance among Cambodian Plasmodium falciparum. Nat Commun. 2018 May 2;9(1):1769. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-04104-z.PMID: 29720620
• Ebrahimzadeh Z, Mukherjee A, Richard D. A map of the subcellular distribution of phosphoinositides in the erythrocytic cycle of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. Int J Parasitol. 2018 Jan;48(1):13-25. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpara.2017.08.015. Epub 2017 Nov 15.PMID: 29154995
• Mukherjee A, Bopp S, Magistrado P, Wong W, Daniels R, Demas A, Schaffner S, Amaratunga C, Lim P, Dhorda M, Miotto O, Woodrow C, Ashley EA, Dondorp AM, White NJ, Wirth D, Fairhurst R, Volkman SK. Artemisinin resistance without pfkelch13 mutations in Plasmodium falciparum isolates from Cambodia. Malar J. 2017 May 12;16(1):195. doi: 10.1186/s12936-017-1845-5.PMID: 28494763
• Ubeda JM*, Raymond F*, Mukherjee A*, Plourde M, Gingras H, Roy G, Lapointe A, Leprohon P, Papadopoulou B, Corbeil J, Ouellette M. Genome-wide stochastic adaptive DNA amplification at direct and inverted DNA repeats in the parasite Leishmania. PLoS Biol. 2014 May 20;12(5):e1001868. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001868. eCollection 2014 May.PMID: 24844805 *Equal contribution
• Mukherjee A, Boisvert S, Monte-Neto RL, Coelho AC, Raymond F, Mukhopadhyay R, Corbeil J, Ouellette M. Telomeric gene deletion and intrachromosomal amplification in antimony-resistant Leishmania. Mol Microbiol. 2013 Apr;88(1):189-202. doi: 10.1111/mmi.12178. Epub 2013 Mar 6.PMID: 23421749
• Mukherjee A, Langston LD, Ouellette M. Intrachromosomal tandem duplication and repeat expansion during attempts to inactivate the subtelomeric essential gene GSH1 in Leishmania. Nucleic Acids Res. 2011 Sep 1;39(17):7499-511. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkr494. Epub 2011 Jun 21.PMID: 21693561
• Mukherjee A, Roy G, Guimond C, Ouellette M.The gamma-glutamylcysteine synthetase gene of Leishmania is essential and involved in response to oxidants. Mol Microbiol. 2009 Nov;74(4):914-27. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2958.2009.06907.x. Epub 2009 Oct 8.PMID: 19818018