Kate Wright

kate wright

Kate Wright joined us as a D. Phil. student, funded by the Wellcome Trust program in Cellular Structural Biology. She pioneered our studies of erythrocyte invasion by the malaria parasite, in particular determining the first structure of RH5, bound to its erythrocyte receptor basigin and to inhibitory human antibodies.

Kate was awarded a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship to continue her work at Imperial College, London and now holds an industrial fellowship at Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

Publications while in the Higgins lab:

Wright, K.E., Hjerrild, K.A., Bartlett, J., Douglas, A.D., Jin, J., Brown, R.E., Illingworth, J.J., Ashfield R., Clemmensen, S.B., de Jongh, W.A., Draper, S.J. and Higgins, M.K. (2014) Structure of malaria invasion protein RH5 with erythrocyte basigin and blocking antibodies. Nature 515 427-30

Hjerrild, K.A., Jin, J., Wright, K.E., Brown, R.E., Marshall, J.M., Labbé, G.M., Silk, S.E., Cherry, C.J., Clemmensen, S.B., Jorgensen, T., Illingworth, J.J., Alanine, D.G.W., Milne, K.H., Ashfield, R., de Jongh, W.A., Douglas, A.D., Higgins, M.K.*, and Draper, S.J.* (2016) Production of full-length soluble Plasmodium falciparum RH5 protein vaccine using a Drosophila melanogaster Schneider 2 stable cell line system. Scientific Reports 6 30357 (* joint corresponding).

Jin, J., Hjerrild, K.A., Silk, S.E., Brown, R.E., Labbé, G.M., Marshall, J.M., Wright, K.E., Bezemer, S., Clemmensen, S.B., Biswas, S., Li, Y., El-Turabi, A., Douglas, A.D., Hermans, P., Detmers, F.J., de Jongh, W.A., Higgins, M.K., Ashfield, R. and Draper, S.J. (2017) Accelerating the clinical development of protein-based vaccines for malaria by efficient purification using a four amino acid C-terminal 'C-tag'. Int J Parasitol. S0020-7519 30018-8

Campeotto, I., Goldenzweig, A., Davey, J., Barfod, L., Marshall, J.M., Silk, S.E., Wright, K.E., Draper, S.J., Higgins, M.K.* and Fleishman, S.J.* (2017) One-step design of a stable variant of the malaria invasion protein RH5 for use as a vaccine immunogen. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A114 998-1002 (* joint corresponding).