*4 Year MRC PhD Programme* Proteomic approaches to studying the interaction between fungal pathogens and innate immune cells

Fungal infections are an increasing clinical problem, especially in immuno-compromised patients, with current estimates of in excess of 300 million cases of serious infection and between 1 and 3 million deaths per year. Invasive fungal infections remain difficult to treat due to increasing issues with antifungal drug resistance and a lack of diagnostics and novel antifungal drugs.

At present our understanding of the intracellular signalling networks in the immune system required for clearing fungal pathogens and well as mechanisms used by the pathogens to escape from or prevent immune cell killing are not fully understood. To address these issues, this project will use quantitative proteomic and transcriptomic approached to characterise the intracellular immune response to the clinically relevant fungal pathogen Candida albicans.