Prof Francisca Mutapi

Location
ZimbabweUniversity of Edinburgh

Departments
Immunology & Infection

Research Profiles

Fields of Expertise
- Biological Sciences

Focus Areas / Specialisation
Global Health Infection and Immunity
My Vision for Future Africa
In addition to changing and practice as detailed above my notable contributions to scientific advancement include the demonstration that antihelminthic treatment of schistosome-infected people accelerates the development of protective immunity against the parasites2and mechanistic studies of this phenomenon contributing to the WHO guidelines for schistosome vaccine development and WHO research prioritization in their current Research Priorities for Helminth Research. Other contributions include describing new cell types in human helminthiasis(Group 2 Innate lymphoid cells3), novel methods of helminth immuno-regulation (down regulation of the TCR complex CD3?-chain on CD3+ T cells4), novel ef fects of helminth infection on human immune cells(CD4+ memory T cells5, CD16 monocytes6, myeloid dendritic cells7), and novel mediators of protective immunity against schistosomes (Th17 responses8). I also pioneered the use of proteomic approaches to screen for parasite vaccines candidates(discovering more novel schistosome vaccine candidates in one study than the entire field’s collective effort in the preceding 10 years9), a technique now adopted by others. My multidisciplinary approaches have allowed me to answer longstanding central questions on the nature and development of protective immunity against schistosomes10and propose now widely accepted hypothesis (the threshold hypothesis11) on why protective immunity against the parasites develops slowly.