Professor James Wakefield
For over 20 years, I have used the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to understand the fundamental process of cell division. Much of this work has entailed the generation of transgenic Drosophila, where embryos express fluorescent protein fusions to individual microtubule associated proteins. Such transgenesis has allowed my lab to make major advances in identifying some of the players in mitotic spindle formation (www.thewakefieldlab.com). In 2017, I began working with a University of Exeter spinout company, BioSystems Technology, who had developed lab-grade Galleria larvae, on a project funded by Innovate UK to determine the feasibility of creating transgenic Galleria. With continued funding from DSTL in 2018, our PhD student, James Pearce, developed the first transgenic Galleria. In 2019, I was awarded an NC3Rs Project Grant to develop a transgenic cellular infection model to study candidiasis in Galleria, bringing Dr Jennie Campbell on board while, in early 2022, Ivan Canada-Luna joined us as a PhD student, again jointly funded by DSTL, to quantify infection dynamics of human pathogens. Launching the Galleria Mellonella Research Centre provides the next exciting step in championing Galleria as a rodent replacement model - for understanding and treating both infectious and genetic human disease
Dr Jennie Campbell
I completed my degree in Biochemistry at the University of Bath in 2015. During my third year, I undertook a professional placement at the Wales Heart Research Institute at Cardiff University. For my project I investigated calpain activation in response to phagocytosis in ex vivo human neutrophils by micro-electroinjection of an internally quenched calpain substrate and monitoring fluorescence intensity by confocal microscopy. After my undergraduate degree, I moved to the University of Bristol and started my PhD on the Wellcome Trust Dynamic Cell Biology program. I joined the lab of Professor Will Wood, and investigated novel proteins involved in the inflammatory migration of Drosophila melanogaster immune cells (hemocytes) to sites of tissue damage in the developing embryo. During the final year of my PhD, we relocated to the University of Edinburgh, and I undertook a collaboration with Dr Yi Feng to extend my project into zebrafish. This validated that my signalling pathway of interest has a conserved role in immune cell damage signalling. In 2019 I joined the Wakefield Lab at the University of Exeter on an NC3Rs funded grant to develop new tools for infection studies in the greater waxmoth Galleria mellonella. I am particularly interested in developing our understanding of the immune cell landscape and am developing minimal processing methods to investigate in vivo phagocytosis of pathogens by flow cytometry.
Dr James Pearce
I started my career at the University of Bristol for my BSc, exploring the biosynthesis of antimalarial natural products using transgenic fungi in my final year, before joining ARCTECH at LSHTM as a research assistant. At ARCTECH I aided with both chemical ecology research and clinical trials of arthropod control products which allowed me to follow my passion for entomology in a medically relevant setting.In 2018 I moved to Exeter to start a PhD, jointly funded DSTL and University of Exeter working with Galleria with the aim to create the first genetically engineered waxworm moth. In the course of my project, I have managed to develop and optimise a microinjection pipeline for Galleria that has allowed me to not only robustly generate transgenic knock-in strains using PiggyBac, but also knock out targeted genes using CRISPR/Cas9.I aim to further develop and optimise CRISPR technologies in a NC3Rs funded training fellowship, where I will look to utilise my previous work and novel developments in transgenic research to generate a toolset to reliably and efficiently knock-in genes at targeted sites in the Galleria genome. These techniques will then be used to generate strains that can better this organism’s potential as a mammalian replacement model.
Mr Ivan Cañada Luna
I studied a Masters by Research in Entomology at the University of Reading driven by a strong passion for insect research. During the programme I had the opportunity to collaborate in research on Dermestidae beetles, expanding the knowledge on a poor known family with great importance in forensics and pest control. I started working with the waxmoth Galleria mellonella as a research technician at the University of Exeter as part of a project funded by NC3R where I learnt the utility of this novel model organism for immune and pathogenicity studies. My work as a technician, and the interest developed during that time, led me to start a PhD studentship for DSTL to use Galleria mellonella transgenics to monitor and regulate diseases of medical interest.