Malaria caused by the Plasmodium parasite continues to cause approximately half a million deaths annually. A detailed understanding of the mechanisms that control malaria has been hindered by technical challenges associated with studying the parasite’s life cycle. This has contributed to the emergence of widespread drug resistance to a number of antimalarials. Dr. Siddiqui's research interest is in the use of multi-omics approaches, including metabolomics, proteomics, peptidomics and phosphoproteomics to gain a deeper knowledge of (A) understanding of the fundamental processes of the parasite’s life cycle, (B) mechanism of drug resistance, and (C) novel mechanisms of action of new antimalarials.
As postdoctoral, Dr. Siddiqui has been interested in investigating the cellular mechanisms of resistance to artemisinin antimalarials. Artemisinins are the first- and last-line medicines for malaria and resistance to these essential medicines has recently spread across South-East Asia, raising concerns for the future control of malaria. Artemisinin resistance is associated with mutations in a parasite protein, and Dr. Siddiqui's research investigates biochemical changes associated with resistance. In her publication (Siddiqui et al, JID, 2017), using modified multi-omics approaches, she demonstrated that resistant-parasites have increased abundance of their key antioxidant molecules such as glutathione compared to its drug sensitive parasites. This has ultimately led to her research interest of parasite’s redox pathway and in finding strategies to modulate this redox pathway and reverse resistance to these existing antimalarial drugs.
In addition to leading the resistance studies, Dr. Siddiqui is also interested in elucidating the mode of action of novel drugs for malaria, which has led to a recent corresponding and first joint author publication in MCP and PLos Pathogens (recently accepted). My interest in the use of multi-omics extend to other research questions, resulting in publications in journals; Small, PlosPathogens and NanoScale.

• proteomics
• metabolomics
• malaria drug resistance
• malaria
• parasitology
• drug discovery
• plasmodium falciparum
• redox regulation
• mass spectrometry
• antimalarial