Research Activities

Worm parasites such as the liver flukes, blood flukes and gastrointestinal nematodes infect grazing ruminants, particularly in Asia and Africa, resulting in enormous economic loss to the agricultural sector or subsistence farmers and negatively impacting on efficient food production in developing countries. Some of these parasites also cause significant human disease. At present there are few drugs and no molecular vaccines effective against these parasites. Research is centered in understanding how parasites and hosts interact to provide information we need to understand disease susceptibility and design better vaccines or drugs to prevent and treat parasitic disease. We also use sheep as a translational/therapeutic model for human diseases (e.g. allergy/asthma; drug delivery)

Research Keywords

Researching in the following areas: Parasitology, Host-pathogen interactions, Vaccine development, Parasite immunology, Animal models - Sheep