WorldLeish7 organizing committee invites you to the Pre-WorldLeish7 Webinar on Wednesday, the 7th of July at 11:00h, Brazilian time.
We are pleased to host the conference “Moulding leishmanial diversity – time and source of infection” presented by Dr. Jeffrey Shaw from the Institute of Biomedical Sciences of São Paulo University, Brazil.
Prof. Jeffrey Shaw is a parasitologist whose research has covered a wide range of parasitic protozoans found in animals and men. He focuses on their participation in Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), especially leishmaniasis and Chagas disease. His interest in leishmaniasis began in the early 1960s and he has worked on them in Brazil since 1965. He has made fundamental discoveries and contributions to the classification, diagnosis and epidemiology of the disease and the parasites involved. His research is focused mainly in the application of molecular methods to these research areas. He is a “Distinguished International Fellow”of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and an elected member of the Brazilian Academy of Science.
During his presentation, he’ll speak about how the parasites that cause leishmaniasis belong to a monophyletic clade whose origin goes back some 70 million years. A meteor impact that occurred 65 million years ago provoked catastrophic environmental changes that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs but allowed the mammals to proliferate. It is assumed that at some point this invertebrate trypanosomatid lineage adapted to these early mammals and radiated with them. This evolutionary pathway was and still is dependent on the relationship of hosts and vectors which is modulated by everchanging environments. Examples will be given of recent advances in our understanding of how leishmanial genetic diversity is shaped by the reservoir and vector interaction.
The fifith webinar is part of the cycle of conferences held every two months in preparation for the seventh version of WorldLeish, a global congress on leishmaniasis convened every four years in a different country. The 7th WorldLeish congress will take place from the 23rd to the 28th of May 2022, in Cartagena, Colombia.
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