Sir Henry Dale Fellow

Email: @warwick.ac.uk

Phone: 024 765 74239

Office: MB14

Twitter: @DrLizF

Fullam webpage

Research Clusters

Microbiology & Infectious Disease

Warwick Centres and GRPs

Health GRP

Warwick Antimicrobial Interdisciplinary Centre (WAMIC)

Warwick Integrative Synthetic Biology (WISB) Centre

Vacancies and Opportunities

For PhD and postdoctoral opportunities, and interest in potential collaborations, please contact me at the above email address.

Research Interests

Tuberculosis (TB), caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), is the leading cause of death world-wide from a bacterial pathogen, with ~1.5 million deaths from TB infection and ~10 million new TB cases reported in 2020. An escalation of drug-resistant strains of Mtb has jeopardised progress to control the TB epidemic and there are now untreatable forms of the disease. Significantly, the COVID-19 pandemic has setback global efforts to control the global TB burden and, unfortunately, it is estimated that this will lead to an annual upsurge of TB deaths. It is clear there is an urgent need to develop new therapeutics and diagnostics against this deadly pathogen.

Mtb is an unusual and remarkably successful pathogen that has evolved highly effective tactics to survive in the human body for decades. However we still do not know which energy sources Mtb ‘eats’ and can access to survive and thrive. Specifically, we do not know which sugars are available for Mtb to scavenge as a nutrient source or the mechanisms by which they are transported and then used.

The broad aim of our research group is to use a multidisciplinary approach, using chemistry, biochemistry and microbiology techniques, to decipher which sugars Mtb uses, the mechanisms of sugar capture and transport and how Mtb modifies its biology and ability to cause infection when its access to sugars is altered. We envisage that shedding light on Mtb’s ‘sweet tooth’ will reveal new mechanisms that can be targeted in the quest for novel strategies and interventions to thwart this deadly disease and improve human health.

Publications

For a full list of publications, see WRAP

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