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protozoan parasitcal diseases
Protozoan parasites cause many of the world's worst diseases and are amongst the greatest sources of suffering and death in humans and livestock. Compared with bacterial and viral infections, researching the biology of these organisms with a view to deriving effective drugs, vaccines and diagnostics has been long neglected. Tyler lab has focused on this group of organisms for many years and their research investigates interaction between these organisms and their hosts, and whether elucidating and disrupting these interactions can provide novel therapies. They take a genomics led approach to tackling problems associated with a variety of parasite diseases and collaborate in a variety of networks worldwide from Europe to South America, to Africa and the Middle East. Recent research has been focused at achieving an understanding of parasite virulence, how and why new virulent lineages emerge, how they can be diagnosed and managed most effectively. We take a particular interest in neglected protozoan parasites diseases such as Cryptosporidiosis, Leishmaniasis and Trichomonosis.
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Group Leader: Kevin Tyler
View my research profileThe group leader, Kevin Tyler, is a microbial pathologist with a genome led approach to zoonotic/gastrointestinal infectious disease particularly protists. He founded several journals and blogs including megajournal Parasites and Vectors, is apast-secretary British Society for Parasitology, is course director for the MRes in Clinical Science, EIC of the leading pathogen journal Virulence and Genomics lead for Health Protection Research Unity (HPRU) on gastrointestinal pathogens.
Research Opportunities
We are pleased to offer projects across a range of pathogens, particularly with cryptosporidium and other protozoan parasites aimed at novel intervention strategies ranging from vaccines, to therapeutics to molecular diagnostics. These are normally available to students via the MRes program (1 year) or for PhD’s via the graduate school. Prospective sabbaticals, visiting scientists an self-funded students should contact the group leader directly. Funded positions and PhDs are all advertised when available. Some potential projects suitable for MRes or PhD are:
Cryptosporidium: treatments and new drugs from natural products
Cryptosporidium: maternal vaccines, passive immunity and the innate response
Trichomonas gallinae virulence: its virus and its host
Secreted regulators from parasitic protists
Protozoan parasite: contemporary evolution and transmission relationships
Pathogen Virulence
Many of the worlds major diseases are caused by agents which cause severe disease in some, whilst others are left entirely unscathed. Virulence as a quality of pathogens is multi-factorial, it is the product of the pathogen and its genetics, the host, its genetics and its immune status and the environment which can be shaped not just the causative agent but others in proximity. Our group is biology driven and multidisciplinary in Nature. We consider what modifiable factors can be manipulated to attenuate, mitigate, protect or cure the diseases that we study. Normally our approach is informed from the genomes of the pathogen and the host and focused mechanistically at the level of host-pathogen interactions. So laboratory based cell and molecular biology employing a wide range of techniques from advanced cell culture and co-culture, imaging, molecular, biochemical and immune assays including platform technologies often by collaboration with experts world-wide. We are interested in pathogen life-cycles, how pathogens infect hosts, how they proliferate and how they adapt to environments and in the molecules that they use to do so. These molecules are often an Achilles’ heal and we target these molecules as vaccine agents, as drug targets and for lineage specific diagnostics.
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Pathogen Genomics
Solutions for infectious disease often lie in understanding pathogen genetics, their identity, their constitution and their evolutionary history. We work closely with the Earlham institute and an network of collaborators on the comparative genomics of pathogens, particularly with bespoke genomic and transcriptomic datasets, to explore transmission pathways and link pathogens with pathologies. The solutions arising from the analyses have direct real-world implications and application and we work with partners in the NHS, UKHSA and worldwide toward translation of our findings as novel interventions in public health context or best practice recommendations. In particular during the next few years we will be Government funded to work with the UKHSA at how diagnosis and surveillance of gastrointestinal pathogens in the UK NHS might best employ whole genome sequencing closer to the affected patient’s point of care.
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Selected Papers
Microbiome diversity is a modifiable virulence factor for Cryptosporidiosis
Hurle, G. R., Brainard, J. & Tyler, K. M., Nov 2023, In: Virulence. 14, 1, 2273004.
Evolutionary genomics of anthroponosis in Cryptosporidium
Nader, J., Mathers, T. C., Ward, B. J., Pachebat, J., Swain, M., Robinson, G., Chalmers, R. M., Hunter, P., van Oosterhout, C.& Tyler, K., 4 Mar 2019, In: Nature Microbiology. 4, 5, p. 826–836 11 p.
Tichkule, S., Cacciò, S. M., Robinson, G., Chalmers, R. M., Mueller, I., Emery-Corbin, S. J., Eibach, D., Tyler, K. M., van Oosterhout, C. & Jex, A. R., Apr 2022, In: Molecular Biology and Evolution. 39, 4, msac056.
van Oosterhout, C., Hall, N., Ly, H. & Tyler, K., 25 Jan 2021, In: Virulence. 12, 1, p. 507-508 2 p.