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Scrub typhus, a severe and often life-threatening disease transmitted by mites, is caused by the intracellular bacterium Orientia tsutsugamushi . It's a major public health concern in parts of Asia, but despite its significance, the science behind why some strains cause deadly infections while others don’t has remained...

Spoiler: It’s complicated—but we're getting closer. A new study published in NPJ Vaccines by the Liston-Dooley Group took a deep dive into how solid organ transplant (SOT) recipients respond to COVID-19 mRNA vaccines—and what their immune systems might be telling us before they even get the shot. Why this matters: People...

Cervical cancer is a global health threat, and at the heart of its origin lies a microscopic agent: high-risk human papillomaviruses (HR-HPVs). But how do these viruses hijack our cells, and what causes their gene expression to spiral into cancer-causing chaos? Let’s explore the molecular tug-of-war between virus and host...

A recent study published by the Koronakis Lab has revealed an unexpected finding. We usually think of proteins as little machines that need to be “switched on” to work. But in our recent study, we found something unexpected—some proteins can still affect cell behaviour even when they’re turned off. PAK proteins regulate...

Celebrating Professor Ming Du’s 2025 Doniach Lecture Last week, pathologists across the UK and Ireland gathered for the annual Doniach Lecture , one of the Pathological Society of Great Britain & Ireland’s flagship events. This year, we were honoured to welcome Professor Ming‑Qing Du as the distinguished recipient and...

When people imagine the life of a cutting-edge scientist, they might picture lab coats, late-night research, and groundbreaking discoveries. What they often don’t see is a toddler tugging at a parent’s sleeve or the careful calculus of who picks up the child from daycare. For Professor Adrian Liston, an immunologist at the...

The successful Cambridge grantees’ work covers a range of research areas, including the development of next-generation semiconductors, new methods to identify dyslexia in young children, how diseases spread between humans and animals, and the early changes that happen in cells before breast cancer develops, with the goal of finding ways to stop the disease before it starts.

The funding, worth €721 million in total, will go to 281 leading researchers across Europe. The Advanced Grant competition is one of the most prestigious and competitive funding schemes in the EU and associated countries, including the UK. It gives senior researchers the opportunity to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven projects that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs. Advanced Grants may be awarded up to € 2.5 million for a period of five years. The grants are part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme. The UK agreed a deal to associate to Horizon Europe in September 2023.

This competition attracted 2,534 proposals, which were reviewed by panels of internationally renowned researchers. Over 11% of proposals were selected for funding. Estimates show that the grants will create approximately 2,700 jobs in the teams of new grantees. The new grantees will be based at universities and research centres in 23 EU Member States and associated countries, notably in the UK (56 grants), Germany (35), Italy (25), the Netherlands (24), and France (23).

“Many congratulations to our Cambridge colleagues on these prestigious ERC funding awards,” said Professor Sir John Aston, Cambridge’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research. “This type of long-term funding is invaluable, allowing senior researchers the time and space to develop potential solutions for some of biggest challenges we face. We are so fortunate at Cambridge to have so many world-leading researchers across a range of disciplines, and I look forward to seeing the outcomes of their work.”

The Cambridge recipients of 2025 Advanced Grants are:

Professor Clare Bryant (Department of Veterinary Medicine) for investigating human and avian pattern recognition receptor activation of cell death pathways, and the impact on the host inflammatory response to zoonotic infections.

Professor Sir Richard Friend (Cavendish Laboratory/St John’s College) for bright high-spin molecular semiconductors.

Professor Usha Goswami (Department of Psychology/St John’s College) for a cross-language approach to the early identification of dyslexia and developmental language disorder using speech production measures with children.

Professor Regina Grafe (Faculty of History) for colonial credit and financial diversity in the Global South: Spanish America 1600-1820.

Professor Judy Hirst (MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit/Corpus Christi College) for the energy-converting mechanism of a modular biomachine: Uniting structure and function to establish the engineering principles of respiratory complex I.

Professor Matthew Juniper (Department of Engineering/Trinity College) for adjoint-accelerated inference and optimisation methods.

Professor Walid Khaled (Department of Pharmacology/Magdalene College) for understanding precancerous changes in breast cancer for the development of therapeutic interceptions.

Professor Adrian Liston (Department of Pathology/St Catharine’s College) for dissecting the code for regulatory T cell entry into the tissues and differentiation into tissue-resident cells.

Professor Róisín Owens (Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology/Newnham College) for conformal organic devices for electronic brain-gut readout and characterisation.

Professor Emma Rawlins (Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience/Gurdon Institute) for reprogramming lung epithelial cell lineages for regeneration.

Dr Marta Zlatic (Department of Zoology/Trinity College) for discovering the circuit and molecular basis of inter-strain and inter-species differences in learning

“These ERC grants are our commitment to making Europe the world’s hub for excellent research,” said Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research, and Innovation. “By supporting projects that have the potential to redefine whole fields, we are not just investing in science but in the future prosperity and resilience of our continent. In the next competition rounds, scientists moving to Europe will receive even greater support in setting up their labs and research teams here. This is part of our “Choose Europe for Science” initiative, designed to attract and retain the world’s top scientists.”

“Much of this pioneering research will contribute to solving some of the most pressing challenges we face - social, economic and environmental,” said Professor Maria Leptin, President of the European Research Council. “Yet again, many scientists - around 260 - with ground-breaking ideas were rated as excellent, but remained unfunded due to a lack of funds at the ERC. We hope that more funding will be available in the future to support even more creative researchers in pursuing their scientific curiosity.”

Eleven senior researchers at the University of Cambridge have been awarded Advanced Grants from the European Research Council – the highest number of grants awarded to any institution in this latest funding round.

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We are thrilled to congratulate the following colleagues on their successful promotions under the University’s Academic Career Pathways (ACP) framework: Clinical Professorship Dr Catherine Elizabeth Hook , HO Promoted to Clinical Professor in recognition of her excellence in clinical/scientific work and honorary consultant...

Myxozoans are a diverse clade of endoparasites with complex life cycles and are the causative agents of some devastating fish diseases. Their phylogenetic placement was long obscure due to extreme morphological simplification and rapid evolution, but they are now established as a radiation of endoparasitic cnidarians that exploit freshwater, marine and terrestrial hosts. I will review diversity, lifestyles, and morphological simplification that characterise these generally unfamiliar animals and then present insights on how myxozoans exploit their invertebrate hosts and disperse to colonise new freshwater environments. By so revealing the cryptic lives of myxozoans we can appreciate how particular cnidarian traits may have facilitated and promoted this remarkable endoparasitic radiation.

Host: Juliana Naldoni

• Speaker: Prof Beth Okamura, Natural History Museum
• Wednesday 11 June 2025, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Lecture Theater, Department of Pathology, Tennis Court Road.
• Series: Parasitology Seminars; organiser: Ross Waller.

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Host: Juliana Naldoni

• Speaker: Prof Beth Okamura, Natural History Museum
• Wednesday 11 June 2025, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Lecture Theater, Department of Pathology, Tennis Court Road.
• Series: Parasitology Seminars; organiser: jn472.

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The Department of Pathology recently celebrated the successful launch of the Pathogen Cryo-Imaging Facility (PaCIFiC) , drawing over 40 attendees from across the University. Researchers from Biochemistry, Genetics, and Pharmacology joined to explore the facility’s state-of-the-art capabilities in cryo-confocal imaging...

Infectious diseases exert huge selective pressures on their hosts, generating an array of population genetic patterns. I am interested in what such patterns, in the genes of humans and other primates, can teach us about malaria. I will present evolutionary-epidemiological models of malaria infection blocking mutations, such as the mutation responsible for the Duffy negative blood group. I will discuss what the global distribution of these mutations may indicate about malaria parasites.

Host: Katerina Artavanis-Tsakonas

• Speaker: Dr Bridget Penman, University of Oxford
• Wednesday 14 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Lecture Theater, Department of Pathology, Tennis Court Road.
• Series: Parasitology Seminars; organiser: Heledd Eavis.

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Infectious diseases exert huge selective pressures on their hosts, generating an array of population genetic patterns. I am interested in what such patterns, in the genes of humans and other primates, can teach us about malaria. I will present evolutionary-epidemiological models of malaria infection blocking mutations, such as the mutation responsible for the Duffy negative blood group. I will discuss what the global distribution of these mutations may indicate about malaria parasites.

Host: Katerina Artavanis-Tsakonas

• Speaker: Dr Bridget Penman, University of Oxford
• Wednesday 14 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Seminar Room, Tennis Court Road, Dept of Pathology..
• Series: Parasitology Seminars; organiser: Katerina Artavanis-Tsakonas.

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Metabarcoding datasets targeting protists in marine environments are often dominated by a group of dinoflagellates referred to as the Marine Alveolates (MALVs). Despite a global distribution, considerable sequence diversity, and significant prevalence and abundance in various hosts and environments, MAL Vs include just a handful of characterised lineages. They largely represent a vast collection of uncharacterised 18S barcodes. Known lineages, however, are important parasites that can impact fish and crustacean farming or even harmful algal bloom proliferation. Dinoflagellate genomes are notoriously large and complex. With only two comprehensive MALV genomes available, inferring robust evolutionary histories based solely on 18S phylogenies remains challenging. To overcome this issue, we are manually isolating and sequencing individual MALV cells to generate transcriptomes for phylogenomics, increasing the number of characterised MALV lineages and improving our understanding of dinoflagellate evolution in the process. Using this approach, we demonstrated that MAL Vs originated from two distinct, free-living ancestors, indicating multiple transitions to parasitism and challenging prevailing assumptions about MAL Vs as a whole. More recently, we have isolated several new genera, one of which appears to represent an entirely new MALV group. Going forward, we aim to use metabarcoding datasets to guide the targeted isolation of uncharacterised MALV lineages, filling in critical gaps in our understanding of these important regulators of both animal and environmental health.

Host: Ross Waller

• Speaker: Dr Corey Holt, University of Bath
• Wednesday 30 April 2025, 16:00-17:00
• Venue: Seminar Room, Tennis Court Road, Dept of Pathology..
• Series: Parasitology Seminars; organiser: Ross Waller.

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Experts warn of serious health risks of using exosome products that are harvested from human donors. Banned biological products harvested from human cells are being used in UK beauty clinics, according to experts who warn that the luxury treatments could carry serious health risks. Exosomes have been touted as the latest “...

A machine learning algorithm developed by Cambridge scientists was able to correctly identify in 97 cases out of 100 whether or not an individual had coeliac disease based on their biopsy, new research has shown.

A pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) tool developed in Cambridge has demonstrated its potential to revolutionize the diagnosis of coeliac disease, significantly accelerating the process and alleviating pressure on healthcare systems. The groundbreaking study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showcases...