Welcome to the website of the Higgins lab

We are a group of researchers fascinated by the tricks that parasites use as they interact with their human hosts. We understand in molecular detail the interactions that parasite surface molecules make during events such as host cell invasion or nutrient acquisition. We study the tricks that parasites use as they hide from our immune systems or manipulate human immunity. We use these insights to guide the rational design of improved vaccines.

Under ‘who we are’ you can meet current and past members of the lab. ‘Our discoveries’ highlights some of the mysteries that we have uncovered, while ‘Parasite stories’ contains some longer reads on themes which have kept us busy for a while. In ‘Exhibitions’ you can find out about our ‘Designer Malaria Vaccines’ program as we visit science festivals to talk about our work.

We couldn't do any of this without our funders, and most of the discoveries described here were made with support from the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council and the Gates Foundation, for which we are very grateful.

We hope that you find it interesting!

Some of the themes which keep us busy:

We want to understand how malaria parasites get inside our blood cells. These single-celled parasites need to invade

our blood cells to replicate and to protect them from detection by our immune systems. They have evolved complex molecular machinery to enable this to happen and we aim to discover how it works. A lot of our past work has focused on a five-component protein complex known as PfPCRCR, which is required for blood cell invasion by the most-deadly malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. But there is so much more to discover! Come back to see the latest discoveries as the story develops.

We are also fascinated by how different parasites manipulate our immune systems. Parasites have evolved with us for millennia and they must resist attack from our immune defences to survive within our bodies. To do this, they have learned many tricks. For example, malaria parasites use RIFIN molecules to suppress the function of our killer cells which would destroy them. Trypanosomes, which cause sleeping sickness, deploy receptors which prevent their destruction by our complement systems. Helminth worms release a set of molecules which dampen our immune systems. By understanding how parasite suppress immunity, we understand parasites better and learn more about how our immune systems function.

We also like to apply the knowledge that we learn to guide the design of better vaccines to target some of the world’s major disease. Our focus is on vaccines to prevent the blood stage of malaria, particularly those based on the PfRH5 molecule and other components of the PfPCRCR complex. When someone is immunised with PfRH5, it induces a range of antibodies, some of which protect them, and some of which are ineffective, or even deleterious. Our strategy is to first understand how the most effective antibodies bind to components of PfPCRCR. We then use this insight, together with the latest protein design tools, to make vaccine immunogens which induce only the highest quality immune responses. With some of our immunogens in clinical testing, watch out for the results!