Animal & Veterinary Sciences

Janelle Wright

BAPPSC (Hons) PHD (UQ)

Position Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Campus Wagga Wagga
Office
Phone 02 6933 4000
Fax 02 6933 2991
EMAIL JANELLE WRIGHT

 

Research

Project

Towards a liver fluke vaccine: understanding Fasciola hepatica biology using proteomics and RNAi

Summary

Fasciolosis is a zoonotic disease caused by Fasciola species in production animals and humans, causing significant economic losses (>US $3B p.a.) to the global agricultural sector. Over 500M animals are infected with Fasciola sp. in the world, and up to 40M sheep and 6M cattle graze on fluke endemic pastures in Australia, causing economic loss within Australia of $90M p.a. Resistance to the main anthelmintic used to treat this parasitic infection, triclabendazole, has been reported in Australia and this resistance is now widespread in Europe (Spithill et al. , 1999). At present, no commercial vaccine for controlling this disease in production animals is available. While sheep and cattle are the main hosts for F. hepatica , humans can also be infected with an estimated 2.4M cases worldwide (Curtale et al. , 2005). Due to the impact of this parasite on animal production and human health, identifying alternative drugs or vaccine candidates for F. hepatica is urgently needed.

I use proteomic technology and RNAi to study the tegument and biology of F. hepatica . RNAi is a breakthrough technology for trematode biology: by applying RNAi, we will be able to define the role of specific parasite proteins in fluke biology and their role in defence against immune attack, thus validating those proteins as candidate drug or vaccine targets and accelerating the development of new therapies for fasciolosis. This work could be applied to the study of F. gigantica which has a greater impact overseas. Therefore this study and the technologies used have the potential to help develop new methods for parasite control that will benefit animal producers and individuals at risk of infection in Australia and internationally.

Curtale et al. (2005) Trans R Soc. Trop. Med. Hyg. 99: 599-609
Spithill et al. (1999) In Fasciolosis , CAB International pp. 377-410

Supervisors

Prof. Terry Spithill

Funding source

Charles Sturt Univeristy, start-up funds

 

top of page ^