Veterinary Parasitology Research Group, The University of Sydney

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Veterinary Parasitology Research Group, The University of Sydney

Our group is part of the Sydney School of Veterinary Science, The University of Sydney, Australia. Located in the historic McMaster building
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02/09/2024

Nichola Calvani, Emily Francis, PhD students Rose Power and Phoebe Rivory, along with AVBS honours student Chelsie Uthayakumar represented team para from Veterinary Sciences, University of Sydney at the annual Australian Society for Parasitology conference. The theme of this years' conference was "Parasites in the Pacific" and was held in conjunction with the New Zealand Society for Parasitology and the 7th International Conference for Anaerobic Protists in beautiful Auckland, New Zealand.

While Jan held down the fort back on home soil, the team did a fantastic job showcasing the diversity of research conducted in our lab; from heartbreaking heartworms to pesky rat lungworm, their talks were engaging, entertaining, and visually spectacular (although, we might be biased)!

A special shoutout to Chelsie for doing an amazing job presenting her honours project work to date to an audience larger than our lab for the first time ever. No one knew she had never been to a conference, let alone presented, before. Well done Chelsie! Chelsie was supported by an ASP student travel grant as well as an Australian Wool Education Trust scholarship.

It was a fabulous opportunity to catch up with old colleagues and friends, while making new and lasting connections. Emily even won the NEB lab lego set!

Now, it's back to the lab as PhD students Rose and Phoebe finish writing up their theses, Emily returns to teaching, Chelsie cracks on with lab work, and Nichola does... something with liver fluke. More about our next adventures soon!

13/06/2024

It’s official… 🥁

Congratulations to Dr Emily Francis who has successfully completed her PhD! 👏👩‍🎓

Emily has been an integral part of our lab these past few years, and we are so proud of all she has achieved. Last week, we had the pleasure of attending Emily’s ‘Exit seminar’, where she presented an overview of her thesis, titled: “Innovative approaches for gastrointestinal nematode identification and resistance surveillance: Transitioning molecular diagnostics from the confines of research to the expanse of the field”. And as always, she crushed it! 💯

But it’s not goodbye just yet, as Emily is currently lecturing our DVM and AVBS students with Professor Jan Slapeta. So stay tuned as she continues her research on livestock gastrointestinal nematodes! 🐑 🐮 🪱

19/05/2024

🌏 Nichola was overseas again recently, bringing back enriching experiences from Laos and Vietnam!

In Vietnam, a decade since her last visit, Nichola planned to meet her colleague Dung Thi Bui. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen family matters, they were unable to see each other at the last minute. Despite this, Dung’s hospitality was beyond compare, allowing Nichola to stay at her home for a week. During this time, a neighboring medical student ensured Nichola experienced the best of Ha Noi, exploring local markets and savoring delicious street food. 🇻🇳

Laos welcomed Nichola with heartwarming reunions. She reconnected with old friends and colleagues who hosted a memorable dinner of all her favorite local dishes. It was wonderful to see how much had changed since her last visit in 2019. One former student is now married with an adorable baby, and another colleague, who was pregnant when Nichola last visited, now has a lovely young family. 🇱🇦

Nichola also delivered 20 kg of essential donations to the Rescue House Luang Prabang, a local dog and cat rescue organization. These donations included much-needed worming tablets (courtesy of Vetoquinol), medications, diagnostic tests, food, toys, treats, and bowls. Recently, the rescue held a worming, vaccination, and testing day at Pha-O temple, home to 28 dogs and 6 cats. Veterinary students from Souphanouvong University participated, gaining valuable hands-on experience while helping care for the animals on the day. 🐾

The Rescue House Luang Prabang does incredible work, and we encourage our followers to support them by visiting their page and considering a donation. 💖

Nichola is looking forward to returning again soon to continue working on important human and animal health issues in the region! 🌟

19/05/2024

We're excited to try the latest ASP VR tool!

30/11/2023

‼️ 📢 Callout for adult canine heartworm (Dirofilaria immitis) specimens 📢 ‼️

Our PhD student Rose is deep into her global 🌎 whole-genome study 🧬 on canine heartworm 🐶❤️ to ultimately unravel the origins and spread of the parasite into Australia 🇦🇺

We’ve already got the biggest collection of adult heartworm samples in the world, but Rose’s goal is to reach 💯 samples! So if you, or anyone you know, has some adult canine heartworm samples stored in >70% ethanol (no formalin sorry!), then we want to hear from you! These samples can be from anywhere in the world.

Let's help Rose reach her goal, so drop us a message if you can contribute to this global study! 🫵📧

11/11/2023

🌟 Exciting Updates from the SSVS Postgraduate and Staff Research Conference this week! 🐾🌟

Our lab group just had an amazing time at the Sydney Vet school’s annual research conference, and we couldn't wait to share the highlights with you all!

The conference was held at our Camden campus this year 🐄, and it was an incredible opportunity to hear about all the excellent research happening in our school. A big shoutout to our three phenomenal PhD students – Rose, Emily, and Phoebe – who delivered some outstanding 'late stage' talks🎙

Rose presented her findings so far on the origins and genetic diversity 🧬 of the canine heartworm (Dirofilaria immitis) ❤️🪱🐕 If you’ve got any adult heartworm samples (from anywhere, any host), send them our way and be a part of this global study! 🌏

Emily presented her work on a mixed amplicon metabarcoding and sequencing approach 🧬 for surveillance of drug resistance to levamisole and benzimidazole in Haemonchus spp. 🪱🐑

Phoebe presented her study (in the form of a fun murder mystery! 🕵️‍♀️) on fatal neural angiostrongyliasis in the Bolivian squirrel monkey 🐒 leading to defining an Angiostrongylus cantonensis risk map at Sydney Zoo 🪱🐀🐌

Beyond the enriching presentations, it was fantastic catching up with some familiar faces (and meeting some new ones). Can’t wait for next year! 🫶

01/11/2023

Phoebe, one of our PhD students, recently embarked on an overseas academic venture! 🌎✈️She presented at the 7th International Workshop on Angiostrongylus and Angiostrongyliasis at the Universidad de La Laguna (ULL) in Tenerife, where she met many of the brilliant minds in the field. As the sole representative for Australia from the University of Sydney, she presented her findings about rat lungworm in an Australian Zoo – find the paper here! https://doi.org/10.1016/j.onehlt.2023.100628 📃. Included in the workshop was a day trip to the famous active volcano - Mt Teide. She then flew to Mallorca, where had a fantastic lab exchange experience with Dr Claudia Paredes Esquivel at the Universitat de les Illes Balears - UIB, conducting surveillance for Angiostrongylus in intermediate hosts (AKA slugs and snails). 🐌🔍Many thanks to the Australian Society for Parasitology for supporting her with a Researcher Exchange, Training and Travel Award.

31/10/2023

Parasites in Focus – Halloween Hookworms

One of the scariest parasites I can think of is the hookworm, it’s a perfect parasite to profile for Halloween because not only does it look terrifying up close, but also - it feeds on blood!

Hookworms are roundworms that live in the intestine of their host, once in there they feed on blood and cause helminthiases infections. Hookworm infection is found in many parts of the world, with an estimated 576-740 million people in the world infected with hookworm.

Are they always a “horror story”?

Professor Alex Loukas at James Cook University research focusses on parasitic worms, like hookworms. Initially developing vaccines against them, in recent years he has been investigating their possible therapeutic uses. Professor Alex Loukas and Dr Paul Giacomin are the co-founders of Macrobiome Therapeutics, a start-up biotech company that is developing helminth-derived biologics for the treatment of inflammatory diseases.

Parasitic worms have always been here with us as we have evolved—and they are exquisitely designed to be invisible to the human immune system, despite (in the case of hookworms) implanting themselves deeply into the wall of the intestine for a blood feed. Professor Loukas and Dr Giacomin and their teams have discovered that hookworm secretions help to dampen the human body’s immune response, by just the right amount to remain invisible, but not so much that the body becomes dangerously susceptible to other pathogens. By administering a small number of hookworms to patients with gastrointestinal autoimmune diseases, such as coeliac disease, this improves tolerance to dietary gluten by boosting the numbers of regulatory immune cells in the gut.

“We have found that, hookworm secretions (saliva) are useful for suppressing all sorts of immune diseases in animal models, including inflammatory bowel disease and asthma. Using secretions has shown us that you don’t need the worm. We have identified a family of lead therapeutic proteins within the saliva, and the goal now is to understand how they exert their anti-inflammatory properties, and produce them in recombinant form using standard pharmaceutical industry approaches,” say Professor Loukas and Dr Giacomin.

OK so maybe not so much of a Halloween Hookworm Horror Story after all.

Terrifying SEM image of hookworm, Alex Loukas and Paul Giacomin, James Cook University.

Read about STH in this IJP paper authored by Alex Loukas, Rick M. Maizels, Peter J. Hotez, The yin and yang of human soil-transmitted helminth infections, International Journal for Parasitology, Volume 51, Issues 13–14, 2021, Pages 1243-1253, ISSN 0020-7519, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpara.2021.11.001. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020751921003040)

Tune in next time for our Parasites in Focus Christmas special 😊

15/09/2023

Last week, Nichola (who has become quite a jetsetter ✈️) and our HDRs, Emily, Rose, Phoebe and Thomas, were up in sunny Darwin for the 2023 Australian Society for Parasitology conference. ☀️🌴

Before the conference started, the team kicked off their week with a tour of the local attractions, including croc spotting on the Adelaide River and swimming under the pristine waterfalls at Litchfield National Park. 🐊👙(*would definitely recommend doing the croc tour AFTER any swimming activities 😅).

At the conference, Nichola presented her super exciting research on the in vitro growth and development of Fasciola hepatica with spheroids. Rose presented her findings so far on the genetic diversity and population structure of canine heartworm in Australia. (FYI - to complete this exciting story…she needs more samples! So if anyone has adult heartworms from ANYWHERE in the world, please send them over!). Phoebe presented her research on the active larval emergence of rat lungworm from bubble pond snails into water! And last, but not least - Emily spoke about her 3 in 1 molecular approach to detect drug resistance to levamisole and benzimidazole in Haemonchus spp. Big congrats to Em for being awarded second most meritorious 5 minute student presentation. 🥳

We'd like to thank the Australian Society for Parasitology for hosting such a wonderful week of events, and for supporting our students with the ASP conference travel grant. See you again next year in New Zealand! 👏🏻😁

04/09/2023

🎉 Exciting news from the lab on the international stage! 🎉

It’s been just over a week since Jan and Nichola returned from the 29th International Conference for the World Association for the Advancement of Veterinary Parasitology WAAVP, in Chennai India. While there, they represented the University of Sydney on the world stage, which means it’s probably time for an update on what they got up to while in India!

Both Jan and Nichola were invited to give keynote talks at this year’s conference. This biannual conference is the largest of its kind in the world, and we're proud to have not one, but two Veterinary Sciences, University of Sydney academics represented on the world stage!

🌍 Nichola presented some challenging, yet important data on gender and racial inequity within the field of parasitology, and spoke more broadly about the importance of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in a talk that prompted discussions throughout the week on how to improve inclusion and representation within the field.

👩🏽‍🔬 She also had the privilege of meeting and introducing the first four Equity in Parasitology (EQUIP) Scholarship winners! Nichola founded the EQUIP Scholarships with her colleague Dr Esther Kanduma via her Herminthology initiative. The scholarships are designed to support women from low- and middle-income countries to attend international parasitology conferences. This year’s scholars at WAAVP were:
- Ms. Daisy Namirembe (Uganda)
- Dr. Glory Mbah (Cameroon)
- A/Prof. Somayeh Bahrami (Iran)
- Dr. Candela Canton (Argentina)

Nichola and Esther are grateful for the support from WAAVP, the WAAVP African Network, , and the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation. The enthusiasm and interest in this initiative hint at potentially expanding the scholarships for next year, so watch this space! 🙌

✔️ During Jan’s keynote he showcased work conducted by a former PhD student, Shona Chandra, delving into the identity of the brown dog tick, Rhipicephalus linnaei. Jan and Shona’s dedication to unraveling the identity of the tick formerly known as the ‘tropical lineage’ of Rhipicephalus sanguineus has had transformative impacts on the study of this medically important parasite and begs the question: what’s in a name? To do so they had to scour the history books and museum specimens, leading them all the way back to Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt… or as Jan says: it took them ‘back to the future’… more than once!

🏆 And to put a cherry on top, Nichola was awarded the prestigious Odile Bain Memorial Prize, recognizing outstanding early career researchers. Congratulations Nichola! More news from her soon… 👀

Thank you to the conference organisers for putting on a vibrant and engaging conference! We are already looking forward to the next one in Brazil. See below for some photos from the conference and meet the 2023 EQUIP scholars!

Address

McMaster Building, Sydney School Of Veterinary Science, The University Of Sydney
Sydney, NSW
2006

Website

http://sydney.edu.au/vetscience/research/parasitology/index.shtml

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Videos

Happy Friday! So - there is a tip for all the budding parasitologists out there in vet clinics 🐱🐾 We’ve all heard about the Baermann test for cat lungworms at Uni. But who has all the glassware, stand, and so forth? In fact, you don’t need any of that, as long as you know how to lure the L1 of cat lungworms (Aelurostrongylus abstrusus) out of the poo. Some of you reading this are in our DVM2 year and we just covered a variety of ways you can recover the lungworms – I hope you still remember! Exams are coming soon… Anyway, we just received this image and video of a joyous recovery of lungworm larvae on Wednesday this week by Liz Smit from “Just Cats Tasmania”. Liz has added “I didn’t have the wineglass with the hollow stem but just used a 60ml syringe. Kitten was asymptomatic on preGA check. She had marked respiratory effort on induction of GA.” Liz took a rectal faecal sample (it wasn’t a huge amount of poo) and voila! What an ingenious approach to use a 60ml syringe. Liz was rewarded by plenty of lungworm larvae and shared the video. Thanks so much! One more hot tip (including for you in DVM2) - When you pull out the intubation tube, there will surely be some mucus, so swab that and place it on a glass slide. Under the microscope you may see the larvae already 🔬 Cat lungworms hatch in situ (=lungs) and are coughed up, so if they are in the poo they must be in the trachea as well. The mucus on the tube is just the easiest sample and it takes even less time to make a diagnosis.