Thanks of course to all my co-authors (Uganda, Netherlands and UK) and funders!!!!!!!

In schistosome 🪱-endemic areas, people are repeatedly reinfected — but we still don’t fully understand how T cell responses develop in these cycles.

In my first ever last-author paper (😱) we investigate this, comparing endemic and repeat controlled human schistosome infection: rdcu.be/exH58

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Thanks to co-authors Lucas Ferreira da Silva, Angela van Diepen, Murilo Sena Amaral, R. Alan Wilson, Cornelis Hokke, Meta Roestenberg & Wilfried Bakker, and to the wider #WORMVACS group.

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We also built an open, searchable database with all results:
🧪 wormvaccines.nl
The idea is to keep it updated with new studies and make the field easier to navigate for anyone working on schisto vaccines.

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To address that, we pulled out common parameters that influence outcomes and proposed recommendations for future pre-clinical study design.

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One major issue: huge variation in vaccine formulation and study design.
Different adjuvants, challenge doses, timing, and endpoints make it hard to compare studies—or know whether a low result is due to the antigen or the setup.

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A few candidates—like Smp-80 and Cathepsin B—stood out, with >90% protection in some studies.
But the median efficacy across all candidates was around 35%.

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How close are we to a schistosomiasis vaccine?
With help from an #MSCA fellowship and support from Batavia Biosciences, I spent 6 months reviewing 100+ pre-clinical studies on S. mansoni vaccines.
Here's what we found:
📄 doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Huge thanks to all! @emerhickey.bsky.social @profandrewmac.bsky.social @darrenthomson.bsky.social @billhorsnell.bsky.social and all others without bluesky!!!!

FIRST POST!
Fungi drive asthma, but does this require germination?

We show A. fumigatus spores activate DCs after 3hrs of swelling, promoting airway allergy. Antifungal itraconazole limits swelling & reduces allergic inflammation.
Check it out: doi.org/10.1016/j.ja...
@drpetercook.bsky.social 👩‍🔬

First 🦋 post (great to join everyone here) about our paper that's been published in JACI: www.jacionline.org/article/S009...

Check it out if you have ever wondered how fungal spore growth controls how dendritic cells (clearly THE best immune cell) trigger inflammation that causes asthma...