We are really excited to share that our first research paper in the lab has now been published. You can read it HERE.

The first author, Jack, tweeted a nice summary of the article, which you can view HERE. We are really proud that almost all members of the lab were able to contribute to our first paper.

My first ever publication and the first from the Pawlowic lab! Thanks to everyone involved in the project, particularly @goldenpipette. Have a scroll below if you want a quick summary and then a thread of my highlights. It’s not thaaat long and there are pictures! https://t.co/RBymikpHAi

— Jack Hanna (@jackchanna) August 4, 2023

We look forward to comments, feedback, and questions. If you would like access to the materials described in the publication, please click the “Research Resources” tab on our lab website.

Mattie was an invited speaker at the Gordon Research Conference Tropical Infectious Diseases: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Advance Tropical Infectious Diseases Health Technologies. I talked about our work done in collaboration with Dr. Susan Wyllie and her lab on “Creating a Comprehensive Mode-Of-Action Toolkit to Enable Cryptosporidium Drug Discovery”. I presented work from Jack Hanna’s time as a PhD student, supported by Simona, Victor Corpas-Lopez, and the rest of the lab.

The conference was originally scheduled for May 2020, so it was really fantastic to finally get to go! The organizers invited such a broad range of speakers, I learned a lot and came away with tons of new ideas.

I’d like to especially thank the Gordon Research conference and Wellcome Trust ISSF dependent care fund for financial support. This made it possible for me to bring Clark with me on the trip. He is still so little, so being able to bring him along made it easier for me to participate in this first conference since returning from maternity leave.

Since the meeting was held in Galveston, Texas it was the perfect opportunity to take a bit of time visiting family, friends, and colleagues.

I gave a seminar at her alma mater, Texas Tech University and got to meet with HHMI Undergraduate Research Scholars (Mattie was an alumni from 2006-2009).

It was a real thrill to share a seminar slot with Dr. Saba Nafees. She was an undergraduate researcher in the same program while I was finishing my PhD. Saba was in town to accept a “Rising Innovator” Award from Texas Tech University College of Arts and Sciences. It was great to hear about her research working at the Chan Zuckerberg BioHub, and about her advocacy projects.

I got to catch-up with Julie Isom, the woman who has kept the CISER undergraduate research program alive for the last 24 years, even after HHMI stopped funding the program in 2014. Julie is such a huge supporter of research and the impact it can have on future generations. It was so great to discuss what I have been up to since leaving Texas Tech almost 10 years ago now!

Also I got a chance to catch-up with my undergraduate/PhD advisor Professor Kai Zhang and his family.

Looking forward to more traveling post pandemic, reconnecting with colleagues, and gaining new research ideas and collaborations!

In late 2022, Juan Quintana approached a few PIs about how we could better collaborate across institutes. At the same time, Lilach Sheiner saw some funding opportunities for building collaborative academic research networks… and so we started to discuss how we could better support collaborations between the parasitology groups in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee.

Thus SPPIRIT was born! Mattie, Lilach, and Sarah Reece co-founded the Scottish Parasitology Partnership in Innovation, Research, and Training.

Website: https://sppirit.net/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SPPIRITnetwork

We had our kick-off event in March 2022 in Glasgow (100+ participants):

Our first annual ECR syposium was then held at Moredun in September 2022 (sold-out event with 125+ participants). Jack from the lab was chosen to give a presentation, and Flora presented a poster about her upcoming Masters project.

We’ve hosted a workshop on writing a fellowship application (small group of about 12 attendees hosted by 2 successful PDRA fellows and 2 senior PIs):

We hosted a virtual “idea pitching session” for applicants to a SULSA funding call:

SPPIRT organised and chaired a session at the most recent IDRIS meeting, highlighting posters presenters that are ECRs:

And we sponsored 3 ECRs to attend a lab leadership training course hosted by the Royal Society of Biology.

SPPIRIT is also hosted a session at the 2023 British Society for Parasitology Annual Spring Meeting in Edinburgh.

To get involved and to hear about upcoming events, you can sign-up to our slack channel (sppirit.slack.com), follow SPPIRIT on twitter, check the website for regular updates, or subscribe to our newsletter: https://sppirit.net/

Grant has almost finished our first in-house library screen against our transgenic Cryptosporidium (I think just 8 compound plates left!). Over his first semester in the lab he learned how to use the DDU database (dotmatics), high-throughput instrumentation, helped with a new TPP experiment, and performed several follow-up drug assays for our drug discovery collaborators.

He received an MRC Student supplement grant to travel to visit our collaborators in the Thorne lab in March to learn how to grow human intestinal organoids in 384 well plates!

Grant had a blast visiting the Thorne lab, learning how to culture organoids in 2D, using high-powered microscopy, and exploring all the Tucson has to offer (mostly cool cacti and bowling!).

Flora applied to the EASTBio PhD programme and was accepted! She will join Dr. Joanna Young’s lab, and will work in collaboration with Dr. Nisha Philip and Prof. Joanne Thompson. Flora was an Honours student, turned summer laboratory technician, turned Integrated Masters Student! We are proud of her and can’t wait to hear about her project at future parasitology conferences.

Mattie gave a talk and Flora gave a poster presentation at the 5th Infectious Disease Research Initiative Scotland (IDRIS) hosted by University of Edinburgh. SPPIRIT also hosted a session of flash-talks from ECRs. It was great to reconnect with the great parasitology network across Scotland! The last IDRIS meeting was hosted in Dundee and organised by Mattie and Prof David Horn with support from WCAIR.

Dr. Joana Faria invited Mattie to give a seminar at the University of York. It was great to get a tour of their fantastic facilities (super impressive!), get to talk with other PIs and postdocs about their research, and share a bit of our most recent discoveries on Cryptosporidium. After covid and then maternity leave, it was great to get to travel again! Looking forward to staying in touch and making many future trips to York 🙂

Simona had the opportunity to make a trip home to New Zealand, and among her adventures got to reunite with her dog, Belle.

Dr. Ross Bacchetti’s photo of Cryptosporidium infecting the gut made the front cover of the WCAIR 6 year annual report! Read it HERE.

We are hard at work post-viva turning thesis into manuscripts… stay tuned for the first rounds of papers from the Pawlowic Lab coming soon!

On January 31st, Jack Hanna had his PhD viva. Thanks to Prof Chris Huston for serving as external examiner, Prof Marcus Lee (the newest member of our division) for serving as internal examiner, and Prof David Horn for acting as convenor.

The day before Prof. Chris Huston gave a great seminar about his work to optimise MMV665917 and also identify the molecular target and the compound’s mode of action. Thanks for the stimulating ideas and discussion!

While he was here, we also held our end-of-project meeting for the Lead Optimisation program for CpKRS. Chris’ lab carried out a lot of the in vitro and in vivo work for the project. It has been great collaborating with his group and the DDU on this project. Me and the lab have learned a lot about cryptsporidiosis drug discovery first hand!

Jack was supported by the MRC DTP programme and co-supervised by Dr. Susan Wyllie. He did a great job setting up mode of action tools for Cryptosporidium. This includes thermal proteome profiling and genetic tools. He set these up using lysyl-tRNA synthetase (CpKRS) as a target-compound pair to establish new methodologies.

Thanks to Beatriz Baragana and the Apicomplexan Portfolio Team and the Lead Op team for their help (Nicola Caldwell, Malcolm Tayor, Ian Gilbert, Kevin Read, in vivo Team). And thanks to Victor Corpas-Lopez and Simona Seizova for their help.

Jack joined Dr. Clare Harding’s lab at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Parasitology at the University of Glasgow as a postdoc soon after his viva. We wish you all the best and look forward to seeing you at future parasitology conferences!