About
Christian Engwerda studies the behaviour of T cells during parasitic infections. His group investigates how T cell responses are regulated during infection and uses this knowledge to develop new approaches to treat disease. Chris established his laboratory at QIMR Berghofer in 2003 as a NHMRC career Development Fellow, after spending 8 years at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is a NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and works with experimental models of malaria and leishmaniasis. In recent years, his group’s research has increasingly focused on studying samples from volunteers deliberately infected with parasites, as well as from malaria and leishmaniasis patients. The goal of his research is to improve anti-parasitic immunity using host-directed treatments in combination with vaccines and/or anti-parasitic drugs. He is also using his discoveries in parasitic diseases to guide development of new treatments for chronic inflammatory diseases.
Research Skills
Christian is an experienced cellular immunologist studying both pre-clinical models of malaria and leishmaniasis, as well as human clinical samples. Techniques used by his group include:
- spectral, multi-parameter flow cytometry and high-dimensional analysis
- single cell RNAseq and bioinformatics analysis
- in vitro and in vivo cellular assays to measure antigen-specific immune responses
- CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing of primary human CD4+ T cells
- pre-clinical models of malaria and visceral leishmaniasis
- processing and analysis of human clinical samples
- cellular immunology.
Area of Interest
Christian's goal is to understand the immune regulatory mechanisms employed by CD4+ T cells during parasitic diseases so that he can manipulate them for clinical advantage. He uses pre-clinical and clinical malaria and visceral leishmaniasis (VL) samples to generate unique data sets to identify immune molecules that can be targeted to improve human health.