WEHI Special ID2 Seminar hosted by Professor Wai-Hong Tham

Professor Gavin J. Wright DPhil FMedSci

Department of Biology, Hull York Medical School, York Biomedical Research Institute, University of York, UK

Genome-led vaccine target discovery for parasitic infections

Davis Auditorium

Join via TEAMS

Including Q&A session

Trypanosomes are protozoan parasites that cause infectious diseases including human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), and nagana in economically-important livestock animals. An effective vaccine against trypanosomes would be an important control tool, but the parasite has evolved sophisticated immunoprotective mechanisms including antigenic variation that present an apparently insurmountable barrier to vaccination. Using a systematic genome-led reverse vaccinology approach and murine infection models of Trypanosoma infection, we show that protective invariant subunit vaccine antigens can be identified. Vaccination with a single recombinant protein comprising the extracellular region of a conserved cell surface protein induced long-lasting protection. Immunity was passively transferred with immune serum, and recombinant monoclonal antibodies could induce sterile protection and revealed multiple mechanisms of antibody-mediated immunity, including a major role for complement. To translate this research we are developing livestock infection models of both Trypanosoma congolense and Trypanosoma vivax that are suitable for testing subunit vaccines. Our discovery identifies a vaccine candidate for an important parasitic disease that has constrained the socioeconomic development of sub-Saharan African countries and challenges long-held views that vaccinating against trypanosome infections cannot be achieved.

Gavin graduated from the University of Oxford with a degree in Biochemistry in 1996 before studying for a D.Phil. within the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cellular Immunology Unit with Professor Neil Barclay at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology. In 2003, Gavin joined the Wellcome Sanger Institute as an independent group leader where his research focused on taking large-scale systematic approaches to identify novel receptor-ligand pairs that initiate intercellular signalling. In particular, Gavin is interested in the low affinity interactions that are a common feature of cell surface receptor interactions and develops new methods to identify this type of binding event which cannot be easily detected using other scalable techniques. The laboratory has identified many novel receptor-ligand pairs including Juno-Izumo, which is essential for mammalian sperm-egg recognition, and RH5-basigin that is required for the invasion of blood cells by the malaria parasite.

All Welcome!