Host determinants of infectiousness in visceral leishmaniasis

Leishmaniasis is one of the major neglected diseases of poverty, affecting over a million people worldwide, with the most severe form – visceral leishmaniasis, or kala azar – responsible for tens of thousands of deaths every year. This parasitic disease is spread through the bite of a female sandfly that has become infected by biting someone who is either sick from the disease or carrying the parasite without knowing it. To develop tools that will help break the cycle of disease transmission, more needs to be known about how these parasites spread around the body, how they are acquired by sandflies and how variations in host immune responses affect these processes. Professor Kaye's research addresses these questions using new animal models of leishmaniasis transmission, state-of-the-art techniques in cellular immunology and molecular pathology, and computational modelling. The research will provide new knowledge directly applicable to the fight to eliminate this devastating disease.