Wellcome Centre for Integrative Parasitology

The Centre wellcome two new members of research staff: Dr Chris Moxon and Dr Clare Harding .

‌‌‌‌Dr Chris Moxon is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at the WCIP and an honorary consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at the Royal Hospital for Children. After gaining membership of the Royal College of Paediatrics, his Liverpool-Wellcome Trust clinical PhD fellowship focused on the role of coagulation in cerebral malaria at Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Clinical Research Programme. Then as a clinical lecturer in Liverpool his research explored the underlying mechanisms of these observations by developing in vitro methods and using laser capture microdissection to examine specific cell populations using transcriptomics in patient samples. Having moved to University of Glasgow in September, his work will interface between primary examination of host:pathogen interactions in patient samples from Blantyre Malawi (largely in post-mortem tissue), and mechanistic examination in the lab.

Dr Clare Harding is returning to the Centre as a Sir Henry Dale fellow from the Whitehead Institute (MIT) where she was a post-doctoral fellow. Her research focuses on the cell biology of Toxoplasma gondii, in particular, how this parasite acquires and uses iron from its host cells. Iron is an essential nutrient for almost all cell types, from bacteria to the cells that make up our bodies, however it can be difficult to acquire and is toxic in the wrong place. Toxoplasma must contend with both high and low iron concentrations and be able to rapidly adapt to its environment. By utilising genome-wide CRISPR screens and unbiased proteomics, in combination with targeted genetic approaches, Clare and her team will seek to understand the role iron plays in these parasites and more about how the parasite responds and adapts to its metabolic environment.  

 

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First published: 23 April 2019