Alex Cook awarded Wellcome Career Development Award

Alex Cook, Research Associate in the Higgins Lab at Oxford University’s Department of Biochemistry, has been awarded a Career Development Award to start his own laboratory at the University of York.
 

Dr Alex Cook

Alex has been working with the team in Oxford to understand how African trypanosomes avoid being destroyed by an important branch of our immune system. The complement system consists of a set of molecules found in our serum, which recognise and destroy pathogens. Trypanosomes deploy different receptors to help them to avoid being killed by the human complement system. Alex has shown how one of these, ISG65, works and also identified novel receptors for other complement components. 

The generous funding from Wellcome will now allow Alex to build on these discoveries in his own research group to fully reveal how trypanosomes evade complement, also aiming to open new approaches for treating inflammatory diseases and vaccination against parasites.

Alex says: ‘I have had the best possible time as postdoc in the Higgins Lab and Department of Biochemistry, and I will miss my colleagues dearly. However, I am really excited to move to the vibrant parasitology and structural biology communities at the University of York in mid-2026 and begin unravelling what cunning immune evasion strategies trypanosomes have evolved.’

Professor Matt Higgins says: ‘Alex has made major contributions to our group, including providing inspiring supervision for some of our master’s and D. Phil. students. We will miss him, but we are excited to see him seize this wonderful opportunity to build his own team and look forward to seeing what he discovers!’