I am a clinician scientist who graduated from Trinity College Dublin and received further training at the Mayo Clinic Minnesota. I am former Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellow. Before moving to Edinburgh I was co-director of the Florey Institute a cross faculty multidisciplinary centre which focussed on studying host-pathogen interactions in the context of Gram-positive bacteria.

Macrophages play a key role in the pathogenesis of Infectious diseases. We are interested in understanding how key macrophage innate immune functions protect healthy individuals against infection, despite recurring challenge, and how these core responses are perturbed by human disease inducing susceptibility to infection. We believe that by optimising innate immune responses we can limit our reliance on antimicrobial therapy and provide an alternative strategy to that focused on targeting pathogens by vaccine responses or with antimicrobials to which they can develop resistance.

We study a variety of bacterial infections but focus in particular on Streptococcus pneumoniae and other respiratory pathogens. We also examine Staphylococcus aureus and are interested in how HIV and other viral infections alter the macrophage responses to bacteria. We use a variety of models to interrogate the macrophages function both in isolation and as part of an immune cell network. These approaches include working with patients with chronic diseases such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and HIV. We are also interested in developing effective screening approaches to identify and manipulate key innate immune responses.

Internal

• Professor Moira Whyte
• Dr Sarah Walmsley
• Professor Debby Bogaert
• Dr Kev Dhaliwal
• Dr Mark Bradley
• Professor Adriano Rossi
• Professor Ian Dransfield
• Dr Ken Baillie
• Professor Ross Fitzgerald
• Professor Jurgen Schwarze
• Professor Juergen Haas
• Professor Peter Ghazal

External

• Professor Tim Mitchell (University of Birmingham)
• Professor David Greaves (University of Oxford)
• Professor Ruth Craig (Dartmouth Medical School, New Hampshire)
• Dr Steve Shapiro (University of Pittsburgh)
• Professor Simon Foster (University of Sheffield)
• Professor Jamie Hobbs (University of Sheffield)
• Dr Ash Cadby (University of Sheffield)
• Professor Steve Renshaw (University of Sheffield)
• Professor Ian Sabroe (University of Sheffield)
• Dr Paul Collini (University of Sheffield)
• Dr Helen Marriott (University of Sheffield)