Lauren B. Arendse

Dr. Lauren Arendse obtained her PhD in medical biochemistry from the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 2014. During her PhD she spent a year as a visiting Commonwealth Scholar in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. Following her PhD, she completed four years of postdoctoral research at UCT. Her research has focused on a variety of enzyme systems including human cytochrome P450 enzymes, human zinc metallopeptidases and protein and lipid kinases. Her expertise includes recombinant protein production, enzymology, assay development and structure-based drug design. In 2018 she worked as a postdoctoral fellow funded by the START (Synchrotron Techniques for African Research and Technology) programme, gaining valuable exposure to structural biology.

In April 2019 Dr Arendse formally joined the UCT Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D) as a Research Officer to establish a Plasmodium kinase platform for target-based malaria drug discovery. In May 2020 she was awarded a Future Leaders – African Independent Research (FLAIR) Fellowship to expand her work on Plasmodium kinases. The FLAIR Fellowship programme is a partnership between the African Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society funded by the UK Government’s Global Challenges Research Fund. Dr. Arendse also plays a role in student mentorship and supervision within the Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine (IDM) at UCT.