Monsicha Pongpom, Ph.D.

Associate professor

E-mail

patthamapp@yahoo.com

Office

50th Anniversary building, Room 726, Faculty of Medicine

Research interest

My research interest is to uncover the function of genes involved in virulence and antigenicity of an opportunistic dimorphic fungus, Talaromyces marneffei. The project started from an isolation of genes encoding protein antigen, then studies continue to find the relationship between their function, especially on relation to pathogenicity. Iron metabolism involving the pathogenicity of T. marneffei has been focused recently and the application of using siderophores in medicine is currently conducted. Additionally, antifungal peptides (AFPs) project is one of the interests. Our goal is to identify novel AFPs for an alternative drugs to cope antifungal resistance problem.

Short biography

Asst. Prof. Dr. Monsicha Pongpom is a lecturer in the Mycology Unit, Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University. She received her Ph.D. in Microbiology from the current work place, under a Royal Golden Jubilee project, the Thailand Research Fund (TRF). During her candidature, she practiced molecular biology from the Department of Biological Sciences, Youngstown State University, Ohio, USA. The objective of her PhD was to identify and characterize antigenic proteins of the fungus, T. marneffei using antibody screening from the expression library approach. She got a best thesis award from the graduate school, Chiang Mai University. After completion, she got an Endeavor Award from an Australian government to conduct her research for 6 months in the Department of Genetics, University of Melbourne, Australia. Additionally, she did a one-year postdoctoral work at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-University of California Medical Center, USA.

Field of research

Microbiology, Medical Mycology, Fungal genetics, Fungal virulence, Mannoproteins, Antifungal peptides, Fungal siderophores, Talaromyces marneffei, transcriptional adaptation, AcuM and AcuK transcription factors, yeast expression

Current projects

“(1) Dissecting antigenic protein- and virulence attributes-genes in a human fungal pathogen Talaromyces marneffei (2) – Genetic manipulation of fungal DNA and proteins, including making knockout mutants, overexpressing strains, expression of recombinant proteins in the yeast and filamentous fungi (3) Fungal siderophores in medical applications (4) Isolation and characterization of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), priority focused on antifungal peptides (AFPs)”

Scopus publications