Wed 20 Mar 14:00: Cutting back malaria: CRISPR-based approaches for antimalarial target discovery
The repeated emergence of antimalarial resistance underscores the importance of identifying new drug targets, as well as understanding the genetic architecture of current resistance pathways and any associated fitness costs. We have developed several genomics-based approaches that leverage CRISPR editing of the Plasmodium falciparum genome to validate causal resistance mutations and explore the essentiality and biological function of gene families as antimalarial targets. To more efficiently determine if compounds kill the parasite via known modes-of-action, we have generated a panel of barcoded parasite lines that encompass a wide spectrum of the known Plasmodium resistome, and have miniaturised a compound-screening assay to allow semi-automated liquid handling of parasite cultures. Competitive growth of drug-resistant lines also reveals the fitness cost of resistance. To overcome a bottleneck in evolution of resistance in the lab, we have also developed “mutator” parasite lines with an elevated mutation rate to increase the genetic complexity of parasite cultures. Finally, we are exploring whether non-coding mutations, specifically in lncRNAs, might also contribute to the parasite resistome. Collectively these approaches aim to accelerate the identification and validation of potential new targets, as well as understand the breadth of the parasite response to antimalarial challenge.
- Speaker: Professor Marcus Lee - Biological Chemistry and Drug Discovery, University of Dundee
- Wednesday 20 March 2024, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Seminar Room, Tennis Court Road, Dept of Pathology..
- Series: Parasitology Seminars; organiser: Anna Protasio.
Wed 15 May 12:00: Title to be confirmed
Laura L. Hernandez, Ph.D. (she, her, hers) Professor-Lactation Physiology Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences Affiliate Professor-Obstetrics and Gynecology
Chaired by Dr Kate Hughes
- Speaker: Speaker to be confirmed
- Wednesday 15 May 2024, 12:00-13:00
- Venue: LT2.
- Series: Departmental Seminar Programme, Department of Veterinary Medicine; organiser: Fiona Roby.
Fri 08 Mar 13:00: Empowering T Cell Therapy through Stemness and Mitochondria
The next Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Friday 8th March 2024, starting at 1:00 pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Professor Luca Gattinoni, Division of Functional Immune Cell Modulation, Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy
Host: Professor Rahul Roychoudhuri, Professor of Cancer Immunology (Department of Pathology) and Director (non-clinical) of the CRUK Cambridge Centre Training Programme, at the University of Cambridge.
On this occasion we are NOT able to provide Zoom video conferencing and strongly encourage in-person attendance for this fantastic speaker!
Refreshments will be available following the Seminar.
- Speaker: Luca Gattinoni, Division of Functional Immune Cell Modulation, Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy (LIT), Regensburg, Germany
- Friday 08 March 2024, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Immunology and Medicine Seminars; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Wed 06 Mar 14:00: When should lockdown be implemented? Devising cost-effective strategies for managing epidemics amid vaccine uncertainty
During an infectious disease outbreak, public health policy makers are tasked with strategically implementing control interventions whilst balancing competing objectives. To provide a quantitative framework that can be used to guide these decisions, it is helpful to devise a clear and specific objective function that can be evaluated to determine the optimal outbreak response. In this study, we have developed a mathematical modelling framework representing outbreaks of a novel emerging pathogen for which non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are imposed or removed based on thresholds for hospital occupancy. These thresholds are set at different levels to define four unique control strategies. We illustrate that the optimal intervention strategy is contingent on the choice of objective function. Specifically, the optimal strategy depends on the extent to which policy makers prioritise reducing health costs due to infection over the costs associated with control interventions. Motivated by the scenario early in the COVID -19 pandemic, we incorporate the development of a vaccine into our modelling framework and demonstrate that a policy maker’s belief about when a vaccine will become available in future, and its eventual coverage (and/or effectiveness), affects the optimal control strategy to adopt early in the outbreak. Furthermore, we show how uncertainty in these quantities can be accounted for when deciding which interventions to introduce. This research highlights the benefits of policy makers being explicit about the precise objectives of introducing interventions.
- Speaker: Nathan Doyle (University of Warwick)
- Wednesday 06 March 2024, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Zoom.
- Series: Worms and Bugs; organiser: Dr Ciara Dangerfield.
Tue 09 Apr 12:00: From structure prediction to therapeutics: the rapidly evolving landscape of biomolecular modeling and simulations
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Prem Chapagain
- Tuesday 09 April 2024, 12:00-13:00
- Venue: Jean Thomas Lecture theatre, Sanger Building, Tennis Court Road.
- Series: Department of Biochemistry - Tea Club Seminars; organiser: reception.
Wed 28 Feb 14:00: Detecting superspreaders in wildlife reservoirs of disease
To better understand the dynamics of infectious diseases of wildlife, it is crucial to be able to fit dynamic transmission models to observed data in a robust and efficient way, in order to estimate key epidemiological parameters and generate well calibrated predictive information. In practice, epidemiological events are at best only partially observed, and as such it is necessary to infer missing information alongside the model parameters as part of the inference routine, requiring computationally intensive inference algorithms where computational load increases non-linearly with population size and with increased dimensionality of the hidden states. With this in mind, we implement a recently proposed individual forward filtering backward sampling algorithm to fit a complex individual-based epidemic model to data from a large-scale longitudinal study of bovine tuberculosis in badgers. This data set, from Woodchester Park in south-west England, comprises >2,000 badgers across 34 social groups over a 40-year period. We deal with many complexities typical to endemic wildlife disease systems: incomplete sampling of individuals over time (through capture-mark-recapture events), the use of multiple diagnostic tests, spatial meta-population structures, and non-Markovian demographic aspects such as age-dependent mortality rates (with censoring), all alongside a hidden stochastic compartmental model of disease spread. The method produces full posterior distributions for the parameters, and predictive distributions for the hidden states over time for each individual, and fits in just a few hours on a desktop machine. We also propose a novel individual-level reproduction number which accounts for major sources of uncertainty of the disease system, and from it provide quantitative evidence for the presence of superspreader badgers in Woodchester Park. The inference framework is very flexible, and could be applied to other individual-level disease systems, and we will discuss future extensions to explore further important epidemiological questions.
- Speaker: Evandro Konzen (University of Warwick)
- Wednesday 28 February 2024, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Zoom.
- Series: Worms and Bugs; organiser: Dr Ciara Dangerfield.
Tue 09 Apr 12:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Prem Chapagain
- Tuesday 09 April 2024, 12:00-13:00
- Venue: Jean Thomas Lecture theatre, Sanger Building, Tennis Court Road.
- Series: Department of Biochemistry - Tea Club Seminars; organiser: reception.
Fri 01 Mar 15:00: Unravelling the mechanisms of a splicing regulator
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Chris Smith
- Friday 01 March 2024, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: Jean Thomas Lecture theatre, Sanger Building, Tennis Court Road.
- Series: Biochemistry Friday Seminars; organiser: Becky Bowers.
Wed 06 Mar 14:00: Expanding BioID: the nuclear pore complex of trypanosomes
Proximity labelling by a biotin ligase combined with mass spectrometry of biotin-affinity purified proteins (BioID) has become a powerful tool to investigate protein interactions in vivo in a range of organisms, including trypanosomes. We recently discovered an interesting off-label application of BioID for protein imaging by fluorescent streptavidin. We found streptavidin imaging superior to classical antibody labelling because it (i) provides a stronger signal with no loss in resolution (ii) can image proteins in phase-separated regions that are not accessible to antibodies and (iii) provides information on localization dynamics, since “historic” interactions are preserved. We have used the method, in combination with expansion microscopy, classical BioID, neural-network based in silico predictions and reverse genetics to reinvestigate the trypanosome nuclear pore complex.
- Speaker: Dr Susanne Kramer - Universität Wüerzburg - Germany.
- Wednesday 06 March 2024, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Seminar Room, Tennis Court Road, Dept of Pathology..
- Series: Parasitology Seminars; organiser: Anna Protasio.
Fri 12 Apr 13:00: Transposon escape points to function in somatic cells?
The next Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Friday 12th April 2024, starting at 1:00 pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Professor Geoff Faulkner, Professorial Research Fellow at Mater Research and Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), University of Queensland, Australia
Title: “Transposon escape points to function in somatic cells?”
Host: Paul Lehner, Professor of Immunology and Medicine and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge
For anyone who can’t attend in person, please join the Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar on Zoom:
Join Zoom Meeting: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/89741634903?pwd=dzcxbU45NjAwQXo1dmlNMjR3V0lUUT09
Meeting ID: 897 4163 4903 Passcode: 539740
Refreshments will be available following the Seminar.
- Speaker: Professor Geoff Faulkner, Professorial Research Fellow at Mater Research and Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), University of Queensland, Australia
- Friday 12 April 2024, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Immunology and Medicine Seminars; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Fri 08 Mar 13:00: Empowering T Cell Therapy through Stemness and Mitochondria
The next Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Friday 8th March 2024, starting at 1:00 pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Professor Luca Gattinoni, Division of Functional Immune Cell Modulation, Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy
Host: Professor Rahul Roychoudhuri, Professor of Cancer Immunology (Department of Pathology) and Director (non-clinical) of the CRUK Cambridge Centre Training Programme, at the University of Cambridge.
For anyone who can’t attend in person, please join the Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar on Zoom:
Join Zoom Meeting: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/89741634903?pwd=dzcxbU45NjAwQXo1dmlNMjR3V0lUUT09
Meeting ID: 897 4163 4903 Passcode: 539740
Refreshments will be available following the Seminar.
- Speaker: Luca Gattinoni, Division of Functional Immune Cell Modulation, Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy (LIT), Regensburg, Germany
- Friday 08 March 2024, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Immunology and Medicine Seminars; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Fri 21 Jun 13:00: Genetics and Environment Induce Loss of FoxP3+ Regulatory T cell Function in Autoimmunity
This Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Friday 21 June 2024, starting at 1:00 pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: David A. Hafler, M.D. Edgerly Professor of Neurology and Immunobiology, Chairman, Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine
Host: Professor Menna R. Clatworthy, NIHR Research Professor and Professor of Translational Immunology, University of Cambridge
For anyone who can’t attend in person, please join the Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar on Zoom:
Join Zoom Meeting: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/89741634903?pwd=dzcxbU45NjAwQXo1dmlNMjR3V0lUUT09
Meeting ID: 897 4163 4903 Passcode: 539740
Refreshments will be available following the Seminar.
- Speaker: David A. Hafler, M.D. Edgerly Professor of Neurology and Immunobiology, Chairman, Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine
- Friday 21 June 2024, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Immunology and Medicine Seminars; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Fri 10 May 13:00: Title - TBC
This Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Friday 10 May 2024, starting at 1:00 pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Professor Simon Davis, MRC Translational Immune Discovery Unit, Radcliffe Department of Medicine, Oxford
Host: Clare Bryant, Professor of Innate Immunity, Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge.
For anyone who can’t attend in person, please join the Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar on Zoom:
Join Zoom Meeting: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/89741634903?pwd=dzcxbU45NjAwQXo1dmlNMjR3V0lUUT09
Meeting ID: 897 4163 4903 Passcode: 539740
Refreshments will be available following the Seminar.
- Speaker: Professor Simon Davis, MRC Translational Immune Discovery Unit, Radcliffe Department of Medicine, Oxford
- Friday 10 May 2024, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Immunology and Medicine Seminars; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Fri 12 Apr 13:00: "Transposon escape points to function in somatic cells?"
The next Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Friday 12th April 2024, starting at 1:00 pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Professor Geoff Faulkner, Professorial Research Fellow at Mater Research and Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), University of Queensland, Australia
Title: “Transposon escape points to function in somatic cells?”
Host: Paul Lehner, Professor of Immunology and Medicine and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge
For anyone who can’t attend in person, please join the Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar on Zoom:
Join Zoom Meeting: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/89741634903?pwd=dzcxbU45NjAwQXo1dmlNMjR3V0lUUT09
Meeting ID: 897 4163 4903 Passcode: 539740
Refreshments will be available following the Seminar.
- Speaker: Professor Geoff Faulkner, Professorial Research Fellow at Mater Research and Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), University of Queensland, Australia
- Friday 12 April 2024, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Immunology and Medicine Seminars; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Fri 12 Jul 13:00: TBC
This Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Friday 12 July 2024, starting at 1:00 pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Sophie Acton, LMCB Group Leader, Senior Cancer Research UK Fellow, MRC -UCL, University College London
Host: Tim Halim, PhD, Sir Henry Dale Fellow, Cancer Research UK – Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge
For anyone who can’t attend in person, please join the Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar on Zoom:
Join Zoom Meeting: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/89741634903?pwd=dzcxbU45NjAwQXo1dmlNMjR3V0lUUT09
Meeting ID: 897 4163 4903 Passcode: 539740
Refreshments will be available following the Seminar.
- Speaker: Sophie Acton, LMCB Group Leader, Cancer Research UK Senior Research Fellow, MRC-UCL
- Friday 12 July 2024, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Immunology and Medicine Seminars; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Fri 12 Jul 13:00: TBC
This Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Friday 12 July 2024, starting at 1:00 pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Sophie Acton, LMCB Group Leader, Cancer Research UK Senior Research Fellow, MRC -UCL
Host: Tim Halim, PhD, Sir Henry Dale Fellow, Cancer Research UK – Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge
For anyone who can’t attend in person, please join the Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar on Zoom:
Join Zoom Meeting: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/89741634903?pwd=dzcxbU45NjAwQXo1dmlNMjR3V0lUUT09
Meeting ID: 897 4163 4903 Passcode: 539740
Refreshments will be available following the Seminar.
- Speaker: Sophie Acton, LMCB Group Leader, Cancer Research UK Senior Research Fellow, MRC-UCL
- Friday 12 July 2024, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Immunology and Medicine Seminars; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Fri 12 Apr 13:00: "Transposon escape points to function in somatic cells?"
The next Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Friday 12th April 2024, starting at 1:00 pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Professor Geoff Faulkner, Professorial Research Fellow at Mater Research and Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), University of Queensland, Australia
Title: “Transposon escape points to function in somatic cells?”
Host: Paul Lehner, Professor of Immunology and Medicine and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge
For anyone who can’t attend in person, please join the Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar on Zoom:
Join Zoom Meeting: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/89741634903?pwd=dzcxbU45NjAwQXo1dmlNMjR3V0lUUT09
Meeting ID: 897 4163 4903 Passcode: 539740
Refreshments will be available following the Seminar.
- Speaker: Professor Geoff Faulkner, Professorial Research Fellow at Mater Research and Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), University of Queensland, Australia
- Friday 12 April 2024, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Immunology and Medicine Seminars; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Fri 08 Mar 13:00: "Empowering T Cell Therapy through Stemness and Mitochondria."
The next Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Friday 8th March 2024, starting at 1:00 pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Professor Luca Gattinoni, Division of Functional Immune Cell Modulation, Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy
Host: Professor Rahul Roychoudhuri, Professor of Cancer Immunology (Department of Pathology) and Director (non-clinical) of the CRUK Cambridge Centre Training Programme, at the University of Cambridge.
For anyone who can’t attend in person, please join the Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar on Zoom:
Join Zoom Meeting: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/89741634903?pwd=dzcxbU45NjAwQXo1dmlNMjR3V0lUUT09
Meeting ID: 897 4163 4903 Passcode: 539740
Refreshments will be available following the Seminar.
- Speaker: Luca Gattinoni, Division of Functional Immune Cell Modulation, Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy (LIT), Regensburg, Germany
- Friday 08 March 2024, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Immunology and Medicine Seminars; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Fri 22 Mar 13:00: Maximising the impact of CAR T cell therapy for acute leukaemia
This Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Friday 22 March 2024, starting at 1:00 pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC):
Speaker: Dr Sara Ghorashian, Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer, University College London and Consultant Paediatric Haematologist, Great Ormond Street Hospital
Host: Professor Rahul Roychoudhuri, Professor of Cancer Immunology, University of Cambridge.
For anyone who can’t attend in person, please join the Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar on Zoom Refreshments will be available following the Seminar.
This talk is part of the Immunology and Medicine Seminars series.
If you have a question about this talk, please contact Ruth Paton
- Speaker: Sara Ghorashian, Honorary Associate Professor, University College London
- Friday 22 March 2024, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Immunology and Medicine Seminars; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Wed 28 Feb 14:00: The complexed relationships of African Schistosoma species
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Dr Bonnie Webster - Natural History Museum - London
- Wednesday 28 February 2024, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Seminar Room, Tennis Court Road, Dept of Pathology..
- Series: Parasitology Seminars; organiser: Anna Protasio.