Dina Vlachou
Adjunct Assistant Professor d.vlachou@cyi.ac.cy +357 22 208629
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Dr Dina Vlachou is a molecular biologist with extensive experience in disease vector and parasite genetics and functional genomics. She was trained as a postdoctoral researcher on vector and parasite research in Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (IMBB-FORTH, Crete, Greece) and the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC, Leiden, The Netherlands), respectively. She then joined the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany) as a Marie Curie carrier development fellow to carry out research on functional genomics of mosquito/parasite interactions. She is currently Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College London (ICL) and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Cyprus Institute (CyI). Her research is mainly funded by the Wellcome Trust and the European Commission.
Her scientific interest is in the field of vector-borne infectious diseases, with a special focus on malaria, a disease caused by the protozoan parasite, Plasmodium, and transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes. Malaria affects almost half of the global population and kills 1-3 million people every year, the vast majority children aged below 5 in sub-Saharan Africa. She is leading the parasite group of the Vector Immunogenomics and Infection Laboratory focusing on the vector/parasite interactions that take place primarily in the mosquito midgut, using both laboratory models and human malaria transmission in the field. This research aims to dissect the genetic, cellular and molecular interactions between the mosquito and the parasite, providing insights into how parasites interact with and evades the vector defences. The ultimate aim is to guide the development of novel strategies to control transmission of the disease.
For further insights, see also:
www.imperial.ac.uk/people/d.vlachou
www.transmalariabloc.org/team/dina-vlachou