ANNUAL REVIEW master Final3a - St Vincent's University Hospital

St. Vincent’s Healthcare Group Limited - Annual Review 2007
Education & Research
worked with Shay Fanning and the UCD Veterinary School on the bioinformatics analysis of artiodactyl
viruses. Paul Cormican has helped the Rheumatology and Breast Cancer groups with DNA sequence
analysis. The group has helped supervise undergraduate project students. Andrew Lloyd continued to
develop and teach a 60 contact hour web-based course in bioinformatics at Carlow Institute of Technology,
which is available for workers at SVUH.
Innate Immunity
Principal Investigator:
Professor Cliona O’Farrelly, PhD
Senior scientists: Andrew T. Lloyd PhD, Kieran Meade PhD
Graduate students: Paul Cormican M.Sc. Aspinas Chapwanya,
Ronan Shaughnessy,
Cormac Whelehan
(started October 2007)
Research Associates: Sarah Cahalane, Fernando Narciandi.
The FIRM III project, funded by the Department of Agriculture, continues to investigate innate immunity in
chickens by characterising the genes mobilised after Campylobacter jejuni infection. We have further
developed the bioinformatic discovery pipeline for analysing the frequency of Single Nucleotide
Polymorphisms (SNPs) in chickens and classifying SNP-rich genes in its genome. We have made a start at
defining the Immunome (those genes that are involved in immunological processes) by comparing the
contents of immunological gene lists. The two projects, started in 2006, investigating the response to
Campylobacter infection in chickens and the response to the diseases of mastitis and metritis in cattle continue.
The Innate Immunity group moved with Professor O’Farrelly to Trinity College Dublin in September 2007. This
marks a change in the nature of a long, stimulating and productive association with SVUH and the ERC. We
will continue to collaborate with key personnel in the hospital.
Awards and prizes
November 2007. We were one of eight selected from the 200 funded under this measure to submit
contributions to a display being prepared for the Minister of Agriculture at the Royal Iris Academy. We were
awarded a €1000 prize for the best outreach presentation. At the same ceremony, Ronan Shaughnessy was
awarded a €2000 travel bursary to progress his research.
Invited talks
March 2007. School of Veterinary Medicine, UCD entitled “The innate immunity pipeline; from receptors to
effectors, and back again?”. Kieran Meade
May 2007 Bovine & Avian Immunogenomics Workshop. “Comparative avian innate
immune responses between commensal and pathogenic bacteria” Kieran Meade
May 2007 Bovine & Avian Immunogenomics Workshop. “Comparative Immunomics: Integrated approaches
to analyzing immune reactivity to microbes” Cliona O’Farrelly
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