Kevin Couper

Overview

Malaria remains one of the most severe parasitic infections of humans in the world. It is estimated that over 250 million people become infected with malaria each year, resulting in over 400,000 deaths, mainly of young children in Sub Saharan Africa, each year. My group use models of malaria and employ a variety of novel and established techniques to investigate parasitological and immunological processes that cause severe malarial disease. We also use models of malaria to dissect how effector, regulatory and memory immune responses develop during malaria infection. Although generation of effector T cell responses is essential for the control and clearance of the malaria parasite during infection, we now know that failure to regulate the pro-inflammatory cascades can lead to severe tissue damage and pathology. Delineating the pathways that cause severe malaria should directly facilitate the development of adjunct treatments that can be used in combination with anti-malarial drugs to ameliorate malarial disease.

Biography

Kevin is a lecturer in the Immunology Research Group in the Faculty of Life Sciences

Kevin graduated with a BSc in Biochemistry and Immunology at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow in 1999.  Kevin then completed a PhD at the University of Strathclyde in 2003 with Professor Jim Alexander, studying the immune response to the related protozoan parasites Toxoplasma gondii and Plasmodium chabaudi AS.  Kevin then completed two post-doctoral positions, first at the Trudeau Institute, USA, and then at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, studying how protective and regulatory immune responses develop and function during Toxoplasma gondii and malaria infections.  Kevin became a lecturer at LSHTM in 2008 and was awarded a MRC Career Development Award in 2009 to define the parasitological and immunological basis of cerebral pathology during murine experimental cerebral.  Kevin moved to the University of Manchester in 2012 to study the immune response to malaria infection.