Jan 2022. Congratulations to Stephen Tuffs (and all the collaborators) for his recent paper published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences. This manuscript describes how the staphylococcal superantigens drive a pathogenic interferon-gamma response that is highly pathogenic in S. aureus bacteremia. Read the paper here.

Dec 2021. Congratulations to Jacklyn Hurst (and our Austrailian collaborators Stephan Brower and Mark Walker) for her recent Pearls article published in PLoS Pathogens decribing how superantigens contribute to scarlet fever. Read the paper here.

Sept 2021. Aanchal starts her MSc!

Sept 2021. The lab welcomes Lara, Carla and Bonnie, 3 new Honour’s Thesis students that will be working with us this year.

July 2021. John was named a Faculty Scholar - these are campus wide awards for recipients who have an international presence in their discipline and are considered all-round scholars. It even comes with some research $$. Thank you Western!

May 2021. The lab welcomes Nicholas Walton as a new Master’s student.

April 2021. Thank you to CIHR (and the reviewers) for funding our recent Project Grant entitled “Novel vaccine antigens for Streptococcus pyogenes”.

Sept 2019. Congratulations to Jacklyn Hurst for receiving an R.G.E. Graduate Scholarship in Microbiology and Immunology!  This scholarship was established by the late Marion (Luney) Murray in honour of Dr. Robert (Bob) Murray.

Congratulations to Stephen, Christine, Lorea, Vlad, Erica, and Charly for their monster paper entitled Regulation of toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 by the accessory gene regulator in Staphylococcus aureus is mediated by the repressor of toxins now published in Molecular Microbiology.

Sept 2019. Thank you to CIHR (and the reviewers) for funding our recent Project Grant to study bacteremia and nasal colonization by S. aureus. This grant is a collaboration with Drs. Tina Mele (co-PI) and Stephen Tuffs.

May 2019. Congratulations to Kevin Min who was award a Dean’s Undergraduate Research Award and Andrew Flavin who was awarded an NSERC USRA award!

May 2019. The lab welcomes summer students Kevin Vlad, Isaac, Nemo, Andrew, and Stephen N (aka The Undergrad Army).

April 2019. Thank you to NSERC (and the reviewers) for renewing our grant on bacteriocins of Streptococcus pyogenes for another 5 years!

March 2019. Congratulations to Blake Shannon who was awarded a prestigious Canada Graduate Scholarship.

Blake’s review on Toxins and superantigens of Group A Streptococci is now published in Microbiology Spectrum by the American Society of Microbiology. 

February 2019. Lana defends her MSc - Congratulations Lana!

December 2018. Lana submits her MSc Thesis (on time even!). Defense scheduled for February 2019.

May 2018. Both Lana and Jacklyn presented posters on their graduate at the Banff Conference for Infectious Diseases. It was a great meeting and we’re looking to go back in 2020.

May 2018. Dr. Stephen Tuffs’ review article on immune system manipulation by the staphylococcal superantigens is now published in the journal Pathogens. Congratulations Stephen!

April 2018. Jacklyn’s, Katherine’s, and Akshay’s review article on the potential role of superantigens in rheumatic heart disease is now published in Infection, Genetics and Evolution.

April 2018. Jacklyn successfully completed her candidacy exam and is now in the PhD program. Congratulations Jacklyn.