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Angana Mukherjee

Assistant Research Professor

Assistant Research Professor
Office
102 Galvin Life Science Center/Freimann Life Science Center
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Email
amukherj@nd.edu

Research Interests:

Malaria remains one of the world’s most important infectious diseases, causing hundreds of millions of infections and more than half a million deaths each year. Antimalarial drugs are essential for treating malaria, but their effectiveness is threatened when parasites evolve ways to survive treatment.

Dr. Angana Mukherjee studies how malaria parasites evolve under antimalarial drug pressure, focusing on how genetic changes alter parasite biology and enable survival after treatment. Her research connects the patient side of malaria drug resistance with laboratory-based experiments. She studies treatment outcomes in patients, establishes Plasmodium falciparum parasites from patient infections in culture, measures how these parasites respond to drugs in the laboratory, and analyzes their genomes and transcriptomes. She then uses CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing and functional assays to test whether specific parasite genetic changes directly alter drug response and survival. This approach creates a full circle from clinical surveillance to laboratory validation and back to improved interpretation of emerging resistance in the field.

A major goal of her research is to move beyond cataloging resistance markers and experimentally determine which mutations, biological pathways, and parasite genetic backgrounds drive altered responses to artemisinin-based combination therapies, the frontline treatment for uncomplicated P. falciparum malaria worldwide. Her current work focuses on emerging artemisinin partial resistance and ACT partner-drug responses in Bangladesh, Eastern and Horn of Africa where resistance surveillance must be connected to mechanistic understanding. Current projects examine how malaria parasite isolates withstand antimalarial pressure, including how altered cellular trafficking, stress-response pathways, and parasite recovery mechanisms contribute to survival after treatment.

Dr. Mukherjee’s work is deeply collaborative and internationally engaged. She works closely with Mike Ferdig and partners in malaria-endemic countries, she supports parasite culture, cryopreservation, drug phenotyping, genomic surveillance, functional validation, and training. A central goal of this work is to connect field surveillance with laboratory experiments that can explain why resistance emerges and how it may affect future treatment strategies.

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:

Primary Research Areas:

Cellular and Molecular Biology
Genetics and Genomics
Infectious and Vector-borne diseases
Microbiology & Immunology

Research Specialties:

Malaria Biology
Clinical Artemisinin Resistance
Antimalarial Drug Phenotypes
Reverse Genetics in Plasmodium Falciparum