Ian Crandall

Ian Crandall is a Principal Investigator at Sandra A. Rotman Laboratories, McLaughlin Rotman Centre for Global Health within the Translational Research Pillar.

Ian obtained a BSc. and an MSc. in Biochemistry from Queen's University before heading to Oxford to complete a D.Phil. in Developmental Biology. He then headed to the University of California, Riverside for a Post Doctoral Fellowship and it was here that he was bitten by the malaria bug, which has shaped his research interests since. Ian is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology in the Faculty of Medicine and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the Faculty of Pharmacy, both at the University of Toronto. These affiliations are useful for his research into new ways of diagnosing malaria, novel antimalarial agents, and the practical implications of supplying antimalarial agents and providing accurate diagnostics to resource poor regions.

Ian’s research is focused on actively testing and developing new anti-malarial compounds, fulfilling the desperate need for new antimalarials with novel mechanisms of action (as resistance to present drugs is spreading rapidly). Specifically, Ian has been examining how small synthetic molecules, that are cheap and easy to synthesize, can prevent malaria parasites from invading red cells. The primary focus of Ian’s research is the relationship between a molecule’s structure and its anti-invasion activity in our parasite cultures. Early classes of molecules used in this research targeted the red cell receptor that the malaria parasite uses to recognize it's victim, however more recent work has lead to further generations of compounds which block the corresponding component on the surface of the parasite and has lead to highly potent inhibitors of malaria replication. These agents may form the basis for future generations of antimalarials, however the team's efforts to improve the potency of the structures has given them insights into the molecular targets in the parasite and how these may have lead to a co-evolution of potential hosts and the parasites that prey upon them.The long term goal of this research is to produce commercially viable agents that will be an essential component of malaria treatment and prevention for the next century.

Ian is also involved with the Laboratory for Collaborative Diagnostics (www.lcd.utoronto.ca), based in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto. The goal of the LCD is to develop effective diagnostic tools using commodity electronics (e.g. cell phones, computer parts, digital cameras) that can be widely used in resource poor setting to facilitate the dissemination of local heath information and to allow the sharing of expertise, particularly diagnostic skills associated with microscopy.