Investigating mucin-immune interactions in the female reproductive tract during helminth infection

Helminths are parasitic worms that cause infections in mammalian hosts, including people.

One of the most common forms of helminth infection is schistosomiasis, caused by parasitic flatworms called schistosomes that live inside blood vessels around the gut or bladder.

To complete their life cycle in the mammalian host, these parasites must manipulate the host immune system to enable their eggs to be released into the environment. This process promotes changes to the host’s immune system to reduce inflammation.

Whilst this is important to protect the host from the damaging side effects of inflammation, it can also induce immune changes throughout the body, including in the female reproductive tract (FRT). The aim of this project is to understand how schistosome infection gut can change the FRT immune environment.

To do this, we will use a mouse model of schistosomiasis, along with a range of different measurable and visual techniques to see how this infection can change immune cell networks in the FRT.

This work will provide new insights into how schistosomes modify immunity at distal sites like the FRT, which could potentially influence normal tissue functions such as pregnancy or make people more vulnerable to other infections at that site.