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Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

Daily Overview

Session

Import to your local calendar

CP4: Cells, Molecules and Genes – Tribute to Bob Sinden - 15 min talk

Time:

Tuesday, 30/June/2026:

1:35pm - 1:50pm

Session Chair: Alicja (Ala) Tabor, The University Of Queensland
Session Chair: Alexander Gofton, CSIRO

Location: Lecture Theatre 1

Boulevard Room 3

This session will begin with a 5 minute Tribute to Bob Sinden, given by Jake Baum, UNSW

Presentations

The secret life of parasites: intravital microscopy opens a new frontier in helminth biology

Hayley Martinez DeCristi¹, Michael Kuligowski², Katharine Muscat¹, Javier Gonzalez-Miguel³, Nichola Eliza Davies Calvani¹

¹Sydney School of Veterinary Science, Faculty of Science, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia; ²Sydney Microscopy and Microanalysis, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia; ³Laboratory of Helminth Parasites of Zoonotic Importance, Institute of Natural Resources and Agrobiology of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

Background and Aims

The earliest stages of helminth infection, during which parasites migrate through host tissues to their final niche, determine whether infection is successfully established and pathology ensues. Yet this critical window has remained largely inaccessible in vivo. Here, we present the first intravital microscopy (IVM) workflow to visualise any helminth parasite in real time within a living mammalian host. Using Fasciola hepatica as a model, we captured newly excysted juveniles (NEJ) during the earliest stages of infection in experimentally infected C57BL/6 mice.

Methods

Mice were infected with 175 F. hepatica metacercariae and serially imaged from 6 hours to 8 days post-infection (PI), with matched tissue and parasite sampling at 6, 12, 48, 120, 144, 168, 180 and 192 hours PI.

Results

Multiphoton IVM enabled real-time visualisation of parasite invasion, migration and host–parasite interactions within intestinal and hepatic tissues. These data provide the first direct view of early helminth pathogenesis as it unfolds in vivo, overcoming a major technical barrier that has constrained the field for decades.

Conclusion

This work establishes a new experimental framework for studying tissue-migrating helminths and provides a critical in vivo benchmark for refining emerging 3D co-culture models.