Description
Title: "Using new in-vitro models to understand the outcome of interactions between the human placenta and the teratogen Toxoplasma Gondii”
Speaker: 
Jon Boyle, PhD
Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh
Abstract:
Congenitally-acquired Toxoplasma gondii can be devastating, causing tissue damage and spontaneous abortion in utero, birth defects and developmental delays in neonates, and blindness later in life1. There are over 200,000 global cases of congenital toxoplasmosis each year2, but the molecular mechanisms used by T. gondii to gain access to the fetus in serologically naïve mothers are largely unknown. The placenta functions as an immunological barrier that both resists and responds to pathogen exposure, and at the forefront of these defenses is the syncytiotrophoblast (SYN), the multinucleated cell type that forms the outermost layer and interfaces with the maternal blood. Unlike every nucleated mammalian cell type studied to date, our published data demonstrate that SYNs potently resist T. gondii infection by unknown molecular mechanism. These past studies and our current work take advantage of the emergence of new in vitro and ex vivo models of the human placenta, and we are currently using stem cells and organoids derived from human placental tissue to determine a) how syncytiotrophoblasts resist T. gondii infection and b) how T. gondii infection alters the biology of placental trophoblasts.
Bio:
Dr. Boyle got his bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology from the University of Montana. After a brief stint in a research lab in Montpellier, France as a Fullbright Fellow, Dr. Boyle did his Ph.D. work on the human parasite Schistosoma mansoni with Timothy Yoshino at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Being now completely convinced that molecular parasitology was the most exciting thing in the research universe, he joined Dr. John Boothroyd’s lab at Stanford University where he studied Toxoplasma-host interactions. In 2008 he joined the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to full Professor in the Fall of 2022. Dr. Boyle continues to work on host parasite interactions in Toxoplasma and other closely related species as they are excellent models to study life cycle evolution, virulence and transmission dynamics.
Date: Monday, April 21, 2023
Time: 12-1 pm
Location: Hill 132 or Virtually Via Zoom
Questions? Please contact Michael Black if you have questions.