Carla Johnson
Thesis title: Identifying blood-brain barrier signatures in cerebral malaria and central nervous system infections to inform treatment targets and patient stratification
MRC Precision Medicine Doctoral Training Programme
Year of study: 1
- University of Glasgow
- School of Infection & Immunity
Contact details
PhD supervisors:
Address
- Street
-
Sir Graeme Davies Building
120 University Place - City
- Glasgow
- Post code
- G12 8TA
Background
I am a first year PhD student on the MRC Precision Medicine Doctoral Training Programme. My project is supervised by scientists and clinicians in Glasgow and Edinburgh and aims to identify treatments that prevent blood-brain barrier breakdown and improve outcome in patients with cerebral malaria.
Qualifications
- BSc (Hons) Parasitology
Research summary
Research interests: precision medicine, neglected tropical diseases, parasitology, multiplex imaging and epidemiology.
Project activity
My project focuses on identifying blood-brain barrier signatures in cerebral malaria and central nervous system infections to inform treatment targets and patient stratification. Cerebral malaria is the deadliest complication of malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum. The parasites infect red blood cells that in turn stick to blood vessels in the brain leading to blood-brain barrier breakdown and potentially fatal brain swelling. Identifying the cause of blood-brain barrier breakdown is key to identifying new treatments but has been elusive using prior approaches. This project aims to enhance our understanding of this complex biological process by employing spatial techniques on an archival collection of post-mortem cerebral malaria samples. This will allow us to characterise in detail what individual cells in the brain are doing and how they are interacting with other cells and with the parasite.
- Mallo, N., Fellows, J., Johnson, C. and Sheiner, L. (2018) Protein import into the endosymbiotic organelles of apicomplexan parasites. Genes, 9(8), 412. (doi: 10.3390/genes9080412) (PMID:30110980) (PMCID:PMC6115763)
- Craig, G. E., Johnson, C. and Kennedy, A. R. (2012) 1,4-Dimethylpiperazin-1-ium 3-hydroxy-2-naphthoate. Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports, 68(3), o787. (doi: 10.1107/S1600536812005375)