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Vicki Barclay
Study systems include
Malaria (Plasmodium chabaudi) in mice
Selected publications
Barclay VC, Chan BHK, Anders RF and Read AF (2008) Mixed allele malaria vaccines: Host protection and within-host selection. Vaccine 26, 6099-6107.
Barclay VC, Raberg L, Chan BHK, Brown S, Gray D and Read AF (2008) CD4+ T cells do not mediate within host competition between genetically diverse malaria parasites. Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 275, 1171-1179
Mideo N, Barclay VC, Chan BHK, Savill NJ, Read AF, Day T (2008) Understanding and predicting strain-specific patterns of pathogenesis in the rodent malaria, Plasmodium chabaudi. Am Nat 172, 214-238
Research interests
My research investigates whether vaccination has the potential to evolve more virulent parasites.
Particular interests include:
Evolution of malaria parasites in response to blood-stage vaccination
In the face of vaccination, pathogens are thought to evolve in two ways: by evolving epitope changes at the antigenic target of vaccination (epitope evolution); or, by evolving changes at other antigenic loci, some of which may involve virulence (virulence evolution). The fundamental difference between these two forms of evolution is that virulence evolution could lead to disease outcomes in unvaccinated people which are more severe than would have been seen prior to evolution.
Using the rodent malaria Plasmodium chabaudi in experimental evolution experiments I aim to answer the following questions:
- Does serial passage of P. chabaudi through mice immunized with a candidate blood-stage malaria vaccine evolve virulence more rapidly than passage through immunogically naieve mice?
- If enhanced immunity through vaccination is predicted to evolve virulence, how do immuno-compromised hosts affect parasite adaptation and the virulence selection?
