Research

Infectious diseases are a major health burden in society leading to morbidity, mortality and immense health care costs. Amongst all of the infectious diseases, fungi are the hidden killers. Fungal infections affect about 25% of the world’s population with mortality rates often higher than 50% and death rates over 1.5 million people a year. The increasing incidence of invasive fungal infections over the last few decades has followed the increasing population of immunocompromised individuals due to AIDS, immunosuppressive drug treatments for transplant recipients, anti-cancer chemotherapy treatments, prolonged antibiotic therapy and other factors such as steroid use in COVID-19 recovery. The high mortality rate is a consequence of many factors including our poor understanding of these pathogens, the lack of rapid and reliable diagnostics and a very limited arsenal of effective antifungal drugs. Using an array of genetic and genomic approaches, the research in the lab aims to understand how fungi infect humans, get around the immune defence systems and cause disease.

 

Both pathogenic and non-pathogenic fungi, like all organisms, respond to their environment. These responses can be transient, allowing for rapid adaptation to changing conditions, or they can be permanent, as in the case of development. Responding to external and internal signals, which is fundamental to all life, involves detecting these signals and responding with changes in gene expression. Understanding how cells and organisms control their responses to these signals is another key area of research in the lab.  Using fungi as the model organism, the work is focused on how genes control these responses and how these controlling genes are themselves controlled. The research is of basic biological importance but also has implications in understanding and treating disease and improving biotechnological processes that use fungi are important in industry and have direct economic impacts as pathogens.