The Global Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Laure's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
About Laure
2023 - ongoing - Lecturer in Medical Microbiology 2020-2023 Postdoctoral Research Fellow – MRC Centre for Medical Mycology, University of Exeter, UK.I studied the antagonistic interaction between the opportunistic fungal pathogen Candida albicans and the gram-negative bacterium Serratia marcescens. S. marcescenswas shown to kill C. albicansvia the type 6 secretion system (T6SS), which is a needle like structure that injects effectors into the fungal cell, ultimately killing it. The main research question of this project was how the T6SS can pierce through the fungal cell wall, which presents a formidable and thick barrier to T6SS incursion. I am currently finalising this project.
2017-2020 FAPESP (Sao Paulo Research Foundation) Young Investigator Fellow – Faculty of Medicine, University of Sao Paulo.
2016-2017 CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) Postdoctoral Fellow – Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Sao Paulo
From 2016-2021, I was involved in either the supervision or as the primary investigator of several research projects, including the one associated to my fellowship. My research during these years mainly focused on investigating metabolic processes in Aspergillus fumigatusand how they influence pathogenicity. I have briefly listed the most relevant ones hereafter.
I studied the role of the physiologically relevant carbon source acetate for virulence traits of A. fumigatus. Acetate is present in human body fluids and peripheral tissues, and a carbon source for A. fumigatusduring infection. We showed that acetate is metabolized via different pathways in A. fumigatus, a process that is controlled by the previously uncharacterised transcription factor FacB. Furthermore, acetate utilisation significantly affected A. fumigatusvirulence traits such as secondary metabolite secretion and cell wall composition, resulting in altered resistance to oxidative stress, antifungal drugs, and human neutrophil-mediated killing. Indeed, deletion of facBsignificantly impaired the in vivovirulence of A. fumigatusin both insect and mammalian models of invasive aspergillosis (Ries et al., 2021, mBio, doi:10.1128/mBio.01682-21).
I identified a previously uncharacterised transcription factor (termed RglT) as the missing major regulator of gliotoxin (GT) biosynthesis in A. fumigatus. GT is a fungal toxin, which is secreted during the stages of early infection and plays a role in zinc chelation, thus interfering with the normal function of immune cells. In this work, I showed that RglT is important for oxidative stress resistance, GT biosynthesis and self-protection. RglT was shown to be important for virulence in a chemotherapeutic murine model of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA). Furthermore, I showed that RglT is present in other eurotiomycete and sordariomycete fungi, including the non-GT-producing fungus A. nidulans, where a conservation of function was described (Ries et al., 2020, PLoS Pathog, doi: