Shannon Hedtke group
Accelerating elimination of parasite diseases
The Hedtke group conducts research on infectious diseases caused by parasites. Over a billion people are infected by parasites, leading to chronic physical disability and economic and health disparities for those living in remote communities in the global south, including Australia. Together with government and non-government stakeholders, we are developing tools that can be used by public health organizations towards elimination.
We combine genomics with multidisciplinary approaches to figure out why public health interventions work well in some communities but not in others. Our research allows us to identify risks to public health from parasite evolution to drug therapies and cross-border migration of infected hosts. We then build tools to identify best-practices for monitoring and treatment.
Dr Hedtke is the inaugural LIMS Marilyn Anderson Fellow.
Research areas
Lymphatic filariasis is a disease with extreme limb and scrotal swelling (elephantiasis) caused by infection with a parasitic nematode worm. Dr Hedtke is leading a team of epidemiologists, mathematicians, and parasitologists to determine why the mass administration of "triple-drug" therapy does not appear to be as effective in Samoa and Fiji as it has been in Papua New Guinea.
We are genome sequencing microscopic parasites individually picked from the blood of infected people to build transmission networks and explore multi-drug resistance across the South Pacific.
For parasite diseases, public health recommendations are partly based on mathematical models that predict how population infection rates will change depending on public policies, such as how frequently drug therapies are given to people.
The Hedtke lab works to improve the utility of geospatial and epidemiological models by incorporating selection for drug resistance, changes in ecological or sociological conditions over space and time, and disease transmission across geopolitical borders.
The geographical distribution of insects that transmit parasitic diseases ("vectors") are impacted by the use of insecticides and by anthropogenic changes in climate and habitat. We study blackflies that transmit river blindness in Africa.
Because different species of blackflies look very similar, but have different affinities for biting people, our collaborators in public health ministries in Ghana and Ethiopia are seeking molecular methods to identify different blackfly species and track their movements across the country.
Our research has identified multiple, genetically distinct blackfly vectors in Ghana and in Ethiopia, and that migrating blackflies likely contribute to persistent transmission of river blindness despite decades of drug therapy.
Parasites make up most of the biodiversity on earth and have played a major role in shaping the evolution of animals and plants. The parasites we study not only need to evolve to successfully infect their human hosts, but also to infect the insect vector host.
Our group has generated >1000 parasite and insect genomes, with thousands more in the pipeline. We have a unique opportunity to explore how the genomes of parasites evolve in response to major events such as host migration to a new area or the parasite switching to a new host.
Meet the team
Group leader
Other group members
Postdoctoral researchers
Publications
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