What is the best way to reduce infectious disease in the elderly? Vaccination! Unfortunately the aging immune system presents a number of challenges for vaccine development. Bowdish lab PhD candidate Mike Dorrington discusses them in this review and presents a case for developing novel vaccines that work within the constraints of the aging immune system.
Media coverage: This paper was picked up by MDLinx. See their coverage here.
Click image for .pdf.
Congratulations to both Alicja Puchta and Mike Dorrington for winning at the 2013 FHS research Plenary! Mike was the recipient of the Best Poster Presented by a Doctoral Candidate award. Alicja was the recipient of an Outstanding Achievement Award, which recognizes graduate students in their final year of a Master’s or Doctoral program who have made outstanding achievements, based on the opinion of their graduate program. This award can be given to a maximum of 10-15% of all students in the final year of a Master’s or Doctoral program affiliated with the Faculty of Health Sciences.
Congratulations and keep up the awesome work!
Fiona Whelan is the first Bowdish student to defend her thesis. Fiona’s defended her thesis entitled ” “Discovery of conserved motifs in MARCO through evolutionary analyses and molecular biology”. Her work on the evolution of the class A scavenger receptors has resulted in a better understanding of their relationship and grouping as a family and has lead to interesting hints as to which regions are conserved (and are presumably important functionally) within MARCO and across all the class A scavenger receptors. She defended exceptionally well. Congratulations Fiona!
Fiona Whelan & Dr. Dawn Bowdish at her party celebrating her successful MSc defence.
Congratulations to Alicja Puchta (PhD candidate) for winning Outstanding Achievement prize at McMaster’s Medical Sciences Research Day! The competition was strong this year but Alicja did a great job presenting her work on why the elderly are susceptible to pneumonia. Her winning poster has been selected to be presented at the Medical Sciences Plenary Day in May (updates to come) and after that will be featured prominently in the Bowdish lab. Well done Alicja!
Come see Alicja Puchta (PhD candidate) and Fiona Whelan (PhD candidate) present their work at the Medical Science Research day poster presentations. March 7, 2012 1:30-3:30 pm, CIBC hall, MUSC.
Sarah Chauvin won a prestigious NSERC Undergraduate Summer Research Award (USRA) to work in the Bowdish lab this summer. Fiona Whelan (MSc candidate) won “best poster” at a CREST meeting (Current research in Engineering, Science & Technology) hosted by the WISE initiative and Alicja Puchta (PhD candidate) won a travel scholarship to attend a recent Keystone meeting (Immunity in the Respiratory Tract: Challenges of the Lung Environment). Way to go Team!
The Bowdish lab attended the University of Western Ontario’s Infection & Immunity Research Forum. Alicja Puchta had her abstract chosen for an oral presentation, which was very well received. Fiona Whelan, Zhongyuan Tu and Sarah Chauvin presented a poster that one the Biorad award for the best graduate poster for students in their degree program less than 6 months and Mike Dorrington and Alex Jiang won the e-bioscience award, again for the best poster for students in their degree program for less than 6 months. Fabulous start to grad school, team!
The IIDR has awarded the Bowdish lab seed money to study the role of macrophages in host response to colonization by Streptococcus pneumoniae. S. pneumoniae infections can range from treatable (respiratory tract infections, otitis) to life-threatening (meningitis, sepsis). The introduction of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) has shifted the epidemiology of S. pneumoniae infections but not eliminated them. In humans, colonization of the upper respiratory tract is the initial step in pathogenesis. This is accompanied by a robust antibody response, which is generally believed to be required for clearance (and thus prevention of infection); however, data for this is not supported by clinical observations in which high levels of antibodies are not associated with clearance or in which immunodeficient patients susceptible to pneumococcal infections can produce robust anti-pneumococcal antibody responses while still being prone to recurrent systemic infections. The aim of this project is to assess the importance of macrophages in the recognition and clearance of S. pneumoniae in the upper respiratory tract. This work will be done in collaboration with Prof. Jeffrey Weiser at the University of Pennsylvania who is a world leader in the field of S. pneumoniae pathogenesis. Dawn will be travelling to his lab in July to learn from his lab members. The Bowdish lab is currently recruiting graduate students and post-docs who are interested in the host response to S. pneumoniae infection and colonization.
The Bowdish lab is looking for highly motivated graduate students who are interested in studying the role of macrophage receptors in infectious disease starting in September 09.