Petra Rohrbach obtained her PhD from the University of Heidelberg at the German Cancer Research Centre (Germany) in 2000, after completing her BSc at McGill University. She continued her studies as a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Infectious Diseases, Heidelberg University School of Medicine (Germany), where she obtained her habilitation early 2008. In the Fall of 2008, she joined McGill University as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Parasitology and was granted tenure and Associate Professor in 2014. She currently serves as Research Ambassador for the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and is a Visiting Professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.

Malaria remains a major infectious disease in many parts of the world, currently accounting for an estimated 3 million clinical episodes and up to 0.5 million deaths annually. The human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is a single-celled microorganism with a complex life cycle that invades both host hepatocytes and red blood cells (RBCs). It spends a great proportion of its life cycle within the red blood cell (RBC), a cell comprised mostly of hemoglobin and lacking in nuclei and organelles. The invasion and subsequent modification of the RBC is a crucial step for the survival of this deadly parasite. To support the dynamic multiplication of malaria parasites, the parasite takes up large amounts of RBC cytosol into a specialized acidic organelle called the digestive vacuole (DV). This organelle breaks down the RBC cytosol’s primary constituent - hemoglobin - to provide itself with nutrients (i.e. amino acids) that are crucial for its growth. Consequently, the parasite’s DV carries out a variety of specialized and critical functions to ensure the survival of the parasite, including hemoglobin degradation, detoxification of oxygen radicals, ion homeostasis, and nutrient and/or solute transport across its membrane. The two most prominent and essential transporters (the multi-drug transporter PfMDR1 and the chloroquine resistance transporter PfCRT) situated on the DV membrane are yet to be fully characterized and play an essential role in drug resistance. The functional role of these transporters, as well as the substrate(s) they transport, remains obscure. It is clear, however, that they did not evolve within the parasite simply to efflux drugs. The underlying biology of this complex organelle is incomplete and poorly understood. Therefore, the objective of our research program is the development of an in-depth understanding of the molecular and cellular processes of the parasite’s digestive vacuole, as well as a better understanding of drug resistance mechanisms, using modern imaging techniques tailored to P. falciparum and available in our lab.