Next Generation Parasite Control

Globally, parasites have a huge impact on the health and economy of the world and cause disease in humans, animals and plants.  Many parasites cause neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) which are pervasive amongst the poorest and most under-privileged people on the planet.  They infect in excess of 1 billion people and each year many are killed or disabled by these diseases, e.g. roundworm parasites are the second leading cause of disability (after head trauma) and the second leading cause of blindness (after trachoma); children are most at risk.

Professor Aaron Maule and colleagues are involved in global efforts to understand and control parasites that cause disease and threaten food security in some of the poorest regions of the developing world.

For example, his team are investigating blood and liver fluke, each of which respectively has a huge impact on the health of young children and livestock.  They are using cutting-edge technologies to selectively switch off parasite genes (gene-silencing methods) and discover new targets for parasite control.  The discovery and validation of these targets by the research teams in parasitology seed the initial stages of new drug and/or vaccine discovery and lead to collaboration with industrial partners.  For example, a recent project on the discovery of new control targets for liver fluke has been co-funded by a UK Research Council and a global pharmaceutical company (through a BBSRC-LINK scheme).      

It is hoped that the exploitation of new functional genomics platforms developed by the research team will lead to advances in the development of next generation drugs and/or vaccines to loosen the grip that parasites have on the health and economy of the world.

Further information on this and other stories is published in Queen’s University Belfast publication ‘The DNA of Innovation, Volume Two’.