Mr George Mbogo
PhD Scholar
La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science
La Trobe University
17818288@students.latrobe.edu.au
Research Activities
I trained a Biomedical Laboratory practitioner with emphasis on public health and laboratory pathology. I then mastered in molecular biology with major interests in molecular pathology and molecular epidemiology. Additively, I have formal training in project planning and management, which skills, I embed in my research approach. To this end, I have close to 7 years experience in these areas spanning, basic sciences, vaccinology, infectious diseases epidemiology to interactions between infectious and non-infectious diseases, with translatable outcomes. Previously, I investigated the diagnostic potential of recombinant putative antigenic proteins of African Trypanosomes as a rapid screening test for point of care applications. I later joined the malaria research group in collaboration with University of California San Fransisco to study parasite factors influencing clinical and treatment outcomes in Uganda. This work led to publishing of 3 peer reviewed articles, that have informed greatly malaria control programs in Africa.In a bid to explore the interactions between infectious and non-infectious diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, and cancers, I joined the apoptosis group at La Trobe University to attain further training and exposure cutting edge research into this area for my PhD. In these three years, I pursued a drug discovery project targeting deregulated Bim dependent apoptosis following chronic beta adrenoceptor activation in heart failure. Our group has deciphered the mechanism of this cell death pathway and thus blocking it, hence posing a novel therapeutic target for curtailing the progression of heart failure. To translate this from the bench to the bedside, I
Techniques/Expertise
Molecular epidemiology, drug discovery, biochemistry, malaria, disease co-infection & interactions, cell biology, infectious diseases, cardiovascular researchCollaborations
Dr. Brian SmithDr. Bellinda Abbott
Prof Philip Rosenthal
WEHI
Baker IDI
Disease Models
Beta2 transgenic cardiomyopathy mice modelsGenetically Modified Organisms
4-OHT induced cell lines (MEFs)Established SV40 infected cell lines