Centre for Immunity, Infection and Evolution. (360G-Wellcome-095831_Z_11_Z)

Despite considerable progress in our ability to control infectious diseases, pathogens have exhibited remarkable abilities to develop resistance to therapeutic intervention, exploit new hosts and spread to new populations. Moreover, our own control measures against pathogens have the potential to generate unforeseen consequences, as immune mechanisms evolved to control several pathogens simultaneously become unbalanced or new pathogens exploit the infection void generated by specific control mea sures. Each of these interactions in the host-pathogen conflict is driven by evolutionary responses whose outcomes may be unpredictable or non-intuitive. In 2008, we created the Centre for Immunity, Infection and Evolution that supports a group of biologists using diverse analytical approaches to study host-pathogen interactions. The value of such an interdisciplinary approach is widely recognised, but is difficult to realise in practice. However, through our unique combination of infection b iologists, immunologists, geneticists, mathematical modellers, epidemiologists and evolutionary biologists we have broken down barriers between different research approaches and built a highly- successful interdisciplinary Centre. We now aim to develop our Centre to; 1. Understand the drivers of pathogen evolution and epidemiology, and host immunity and resistance through interdisciplinary research. 2. Target our research toward problems in a 'real world' setting, including c linical and veterinary medicine.