Tom Harrison

Tom joined us in 2016 as an undergraduate project student for his final year research project. After a successful 18 weeks using protein design methods to produce new malaria vaccine immunogens he returned for his D. Phil. in 2017. He is funded by the Peter J. Braam graduate scholarship for Global Wellbeing at Merton College, Oxford.

Tom is interested in a group of proteins found on the surfaces of erythrocytes infected with the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. Tom's first paper from his D. Phil. shows how these RIFINs can bind to and regulate the inhibitory immune receptor, LILRB1.

His second paper contributes the first structure of one of the PIR proteins, the major parasite protein family on the surfaces of erythrocytes infected with many species of Plasmodium parasites.

Tom won the 2020 Eric Newsholme Prize for Biochemistry from Merton College, Oxford.

Harrison, T.E., Mørch, A.M., Felce, J.H., Sakoguchi, A., Reid, A.J., Arase, H., Dustin, M.L. and Higgins, M.K. (2020) Structural basis for RIFIN-mediated activation of LILRB1 in malaria. Nature 587 309-312

Harrison, T.E., Reid, A.J., Cunningham, D., Langhorne, D. and Higgins, M.K. (2020) Structure of the Plasmodium-interspersed repeat proteins of the malaria parasite. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 117 32098-32104

Giorgalli, M., Cunningham, D.A., Broncel, M., Sait, A., Harrison, T.E., Hosking, C., Vandomme, A., Amis, S.I., Antonello, A., Sullivan, L., Uwadiae, F., Torella, L., Higgins, M.K. and Langhorne, J. (2022) Differential Trafficking and Expression of PIR Proteins in Acute and Chronic Plasmodium Infections. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 12 877253

Harrison, T.E.*, Alam, N.*, Farrell, B.*, Quinkert, D., Lias, A.M., King, L.D., Draper, S.J., Campeotto, I. and Higgins, M.K. (2024) Rational structure-guided design of a blood stage malaria vaccine immunogen presenting a single epitope from PfRH5. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.02.29.582763 (* contributed equally)