Professor Niroshini Nirmalan
School of Science, Engineering and Environment
Current positions
Head of Biomedicine
Biography
I graduated from the Faculty of Medicine, Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1991 where I was appointed Lecturer in Parasitology. Following my MSc and PhD at the University of Salford, Manchester, I did my postdoctoral training in Prof. John Hyde’s laboratory at the University of Manchester, Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). I went on to work as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocenter (MIB, University of Manchester) and my research led to the first annotated 2D proteomic maps for the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum and the development of a novel heavy isoleucine-based quantitative proteomic methodology to investigate the malarial proteome. I was appointed Senior Scientist at the Cancer Research UK Clinical Center at St James’s Hospital, University of Leeds in 2007, where I worked on developing a novel label-free quantitative proteomics methodology to investigate formalin-fixed tissue archives. I took up my current role as Senior Lecturer at the University of Salford in April 2010
Areas of research
Malaria, Drug Discovery, Plasmodium, Drug Repositioning, Emetine, Natural products
I teach on a number of modules across the Biomedical Science and Human Biology and Infectious Diseases Programmes (Human Anatomy, Cell Biology, Pathophysiology, Cell pathology, Final year research projects) and on the postgraduate MSc Programmes offered in Molecular and Vector Parasitology and Biotechnology.
Drug repositioning and Drug discovery for Malaria
Resistance acquisition in varying degrees to ALL categories of antimalarial drugs coupled with a paucity of new drugs makes a catastrophic void in the antimalarial drug market a very real possibility.
With developmental timelines taking 15-17 years for a new drug, drug repositioning could afford an alternative route to fast track discovery. The group works on evaluating exisiting drugs and synthetic derivatives for repositioning as anti-malarials. We also have ongoing research investigating a range of natural product sources (plant-derived in particular) for discovering affordable and novel leads.
Qualifications
- 1999: PhD, University of Salford, UK
- 1996: MSc in Molecular Parasitology, University of Salford, UK
- 1991: MBBS, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka