Clinton Lau

Clinton Lau joined us in 2010 for his final year undergraduate research project and returned for his D. Phil. He led our studies of PfEMP1 proteins which bind to EPCR, determining crystal structures of these complexes and investigating mechanisms of sequence divergence and functional inhibition. He explored dual EPCR and ICAM-1 binding PfEMP1 proteins. He was also the first in the lab’ to use a structure-guided design approach as he grafted the EPCR binding site from a PfEMP1 protein onto a small scaffold.

After a very successful time as a postdoctoral researcher at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge with Dr Andrew Carter, Clinton was awarded a Wellcome career development fellowship to start his own research program at the University of Oxford (https://www.bioch.ox.ac.uk/research/lau).

Publications while in the Higgins lab:

Lau, C.K.Y., Turner, L., Jespersen, J.S., Lowe, E.D., Petersen, B., Wang, C.W., Petersen, J.E.V., Lusingu, J., Theander, T.G., Lavstsen, T. and Higgins, M.K. (2015) Structural conservation despite huge sequence diversity allows EPCR binding by the PfEMP1 family implicated in severe childhood malaria. Cell Host and Microbe 17 118-129

Lennartz, F., Adams, Y., Bengtsson, A., Olsen, R.W., Turner, L., Ndam, N.T., Ecklu-Mensah, G., Moussiliou, A., Ofori, M.F., Gamain, B., Lusingu, J.P., Petersen, J.E.V, Wang, C.W., Nunes-Silva, S., Jespersen, J.S., Lau, C.K.W., Theander, T.G., Lavstsen, T., Hviid, L., Higgins, M.K.* and Jensen^,A.T.R * (2017) Structure-guided identification of a family of dual receptor binding PfEMP1 that are associated with cerebral malaria. Cell Host and Microbe 21 403-414

Barber, N.M., Lau, C.Y.K., Turner, L., Watson, G., Thrane, S., Lusingu, J.P.A., Lavstsen, T. and Higgins, M.K. (2019) Structure-guided design of a synthetic mimic of an EPCR-binding PfEMP1 protein. mSphere 6 e01081