What we do

Parasitic helminths (worms) cause neglected diseases in people living in economically developing countries, and cause infections that impact the welfare and productivity of farm animals and horticultural crops. Our research aims to understand how these parasites interact with their hosts, with a view to developing new diagnostic and control approaches to help combat their impacts.

Our projects

Functions of extracellular RNAs

Parasites secrete non-coding RNAs inside their host animals, with growing evidence showing that these molecules interact with host cells to assist parasite virulence and survival. We are interested in parasite secreted RNAs in terms of: (i)Host-parasite interactions: Understanding the functions of extracellular RNAs in parasite virulence and manipulation of the host immune system; (ii) Diagnostic biomarkers: Profiling extracellular RNAs as unique circulating markers of parasite infection, with potential to lead development of new diagnostics tests. We address these questions in three main experimental systems: Fasciola hepatica, Schistosoma mansoni and Strongyloides ratti.

Developing functional genomics tools for intramolluscan trematodes

Trematode parasites including Fasciola and Schistosoma spend part of their life as parasites of snails. Our understanding of these life cycle stages is relatively poor; this is due in part to limited uptake of robust functional genomics tools for their study. We are interested in developing relatively simple, robust RNAi and CRISPR/Cas9 tools to enable parasitologists worldwide to investigate intramolluscan parasite biology. In these projects we focus on Biomphalaria glabrata and Lymnaea stagnalis as model systems.

Research in the McVeigh Lab is generously funded by: