Museum and Institute of Zoology; Witold Stefański Institute of Parasitology; Warsaw, PL
Our laboratory is collaborating with Prof. Agata Kaczmarek (Witold Stefański Institute of Parasitology, Warsaw, Poland) on a Polish–Czech project exploring how dietary fatty acids can shape innate immune responses to fungal infections, with particular emphasis on the opportunistic pathogen Conidiobolus coronatus. As fungal diseases become a growing concern in human and animal health—driven by factors such as climate change, global mobility, and antifungal resistance—this project focuses on strengthening host immunity as an alternative or complementary strategy to directly targeting the pathogen.
Using the wax moth larva Galleria mellonella as a tractable and evolutionarily informative infection model, we systematically examine both humoral and cellular immunity, including antimicrobial peptide production, melanization, hemocyte function, apoptosis, and immune signalling pathways. A key contribution of our lab is the integration of mass spectrometry–based metabolomics and lipidomics (LC-MS and GC-MS) to comprehensively profile free and lipid-bound fatty acids, eicosanoids, oxidative stress markers, and global metabolic responses in hemolymph and immune cells. By combining these datasets with transcriptomic and proteomic readouts, the collaboration aims to uncover mechanisms of nutritional immune modulation and identify non-pharmacological approaches that could enhance resistance to fungal infections in biomedicine, veterinary practice, and sustainable agriculture.