CV Gabriele Pradel

 

Gabriele Pradel studied biology at the Justus Liebig University of Gießen and received her PhD from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main in 1999. Between 1999 and 2001, Gabriele Pradel worked first as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Medical and Molecular Parasitology at New York Univeristy School of Medicine and from 2001 onwards worked at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. During this time, she worked on the cell biological aspects of the invasion and transmission stages of the malaria pathogen Plasmodium.

In 2005, Gabriele Pradel returned to Germany and headed an Emmy-Noether junior research group at the Research Center for Infectious Diseases of the Julius Maximilians University in Würzburg, which focused on malaria gametocytes as targets of transmission-blocking vaccines. In 2008, she habilitated at the University of Würzburg in the field of cell and microbiology. In 2012, Gabriele Pradel moved to RWTH Aachen University, where she led a project group on malaria vaccine development at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology and the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology.

In April 2014, Gabriele Pradel was appointed to a Heisenberg professorship. Since then, she is heading the Division of Cellular and Applied Infection Biology at RWTH Aachen University as a university professor. Gabriele Pradel's research group investigates target structures in the blood and sexual stages of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which can be used for intervention measures to combat malaria.

Selected Publications

  1. Bennink S, von Bohl A, Ngwa CJ, Henschel L, Kuehn A, Pilch N, Weißbach T, Rosinski AN, Scheuermayer M, Repnik U, Przyborski JM, Minns AM, Orchard LM, Griffiths G, Lindner SE, Llinás M, Pradel G (2018) A seven-helix protein constitutes stress granules crucial for regulating translation during human-to-mosquito transmission of Plasmodium falciparum . PLoS Pathog 14:e1007249.
  2. Ngwa CJ, Kiesow MJ, Papst O, Orchard LM, Filarsky M, Rosinski AN, Voss TS, Llinás M, Pradel G (2017) Transcriptional profiling defines Histone acetylation as a regulator of gene expression during human-to-mosquito transmission of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum . Front Cell Infect Microbiol 7:320.
  3. Wirth CC, Glushakova S, Scheuermayer M, Repnik U, Garg S, Schaack D, Kachman MM, Weißbach T, Zimmerberg J, Dandekar T, Griffiths G, Chitnis CE, Singh S, Fischer R, Pradel G (2014) Perforin-like protein PPLP2 permeabilizes the red blood cell membrane during egress of Plasmodium falciparum gametocytes. Cell Microbiol 16:709-733.
  4. Simon N, Lasonder E, Scheuermayer M, Kuehn A, Tews S, Fischer R, Zipfel PF, Skerka C, Pradel G (2013) Malaria parasites co-opt human factor H to prevent complement-mediated lysis in the mosquito midgut. Cell Host Microbe 13:29-41.
  5. Rupp I, Sologub L, Williamson KC, Scheuermayer M, Reininger L, Doerig C, Eksi S, Kombila DU, Frank M, Pradel G (2011) Malaria parasites form filamentous cell-to-cell connections during reproduction in the mosquito midgut. Cell Res 21: 683-696.
  6. Simon N, Scholz SM, Moreira C, Templeton TJ, Kuehn A, Dude MA, Pradel G (2009) Sexual stage adhesion proteins form multi-protein complexes in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum . J Biol Chem 284:14537-14546.
  7. Pradel G, Hayton K, Aravind L, Iyer L, Abrahamsen MS, Bonawitz A, Mejia C, Templeton TJ (2004) A multidomain adhesion protein family expressed in Plasmodium falciparum is essential for transmission to the mosquito. J Exp Med 199:1533-1544.
  8. Pradel G, Garapaty S, Frevert U (2002) Proteoglycans mediate malaria sporozoite targeting to the liver. Mol Microbiol 45:637-651.
  9. Pradel G. Frevert U (2001) Malaria sporozoites actively enter and passage through rat Kupffer cells prior to hepatocyte invasion. Hepatology 33:1154-1165.
  10. Mota MM, Pradel G, Vanderberg JP, Hafalla JC, Frevert U, Nussenzweig RS, Nussenzweig V, Rodríguez A (2001) Migration of Plasmodium sporozoites through cells before infection. Science 291:141-144.