Steven Sinkins

Steven Sinkins completed his PhD at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and held positions in Liverpool, Oxford and Lancaster prior to moving to the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research in 2016. He has been a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow since 2006 and is Director of the GCRF Research Network 'ANTI-VeC'. Research in the Sinkins group focuses on mosquito-symbiont-pathogen interactions, especially the virus transmission-blocking capacity of Wolbachia inherited symbionts in Aedes mosquitoes. New mosquito lines carrying various strains of Wolbachia are being generated, characterized and used to study the mechanisms by which these bacteria inhibit viral replication. Wellcome Trust-funded field trials conducted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia have examined the mass release of Wolbachia-carrying Aedes aegypti. Dengue cases have successfully reduced in a number of sites that were previously dengue hot-spots. A microsporidian symbiont in Anopheles mosquitoes that blocks the transmission of malaria has also been described recently, in a collaboration with researchers at icipe Kenya, and will be the focus of translation work for malaria control.