Cardiff Webinar: The intersection of nutrition and infection at the host-pathogen interface, 30th September 2021

The next webinar from the Cardiff University School of Medicine Science seminar series will feature Professor Eric P. Skaar, Director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation. 

Date and time: Thursday 30 September 2021, 14:00 – 15:00 BST

The Skaar laboratory focuses on the impact of nutrition on the innate immune response to infectious diseases. They seek to understand (i) nutrient acquisition by bacterial pathogens, (ii) how vertebrate immune proteins sequester nutrients during the pathogenesis of infection and cancer, (iii) competition for nutrients between pathogens and the healthy microbiome, and (iv) the impact of diet on infection.

The intersection of nutrition and infection at the host-pathogen interface

Cells require nutrient metal to carry out essential biochemical processes. This requirement is something that the immune system has exploited to defend against infection by restricting microbial access to metal. This process of nutrient restriction during infection is called “nutritional immunity”. Bacterial pathogens evolved elaborate mechanisms to circumvent nutritional immunity and acquire metal during infection. This struggle for nutrient metal impacts microbial virulence as well as the immune response of the host, profoundly impacting the outcome of host-pathogen interactions. In this talk I will cover aspects of nutritional immunity and microbial countermeasures that are relevant to infectious diseases.

We have developed a powerful 3D imaging platform for discovery-based molecular histology. We have applied this platform to the study of multiple murine models of infection, leading to the discovery of infection-associated alterations in the distribution and abundance of macromolecules and elements in tissue. These data provide a 3D analysis of how disease impacts the molecular architecture of complex tissues in infected animals, enable diagnosis of infection through imaging-based detection of bacterial and host analytes, and reveal molecular heterogeneity at the host-pathogen interface.

Visit the Eventbrite page to sign up.