About me

Hey, I'm Pat, a biotechnologist from Tasmania who is passionate about One Health, comparative immunology, and antimicrobial resistance. Lover of early morning runs, DIY science, anything fermented, and travel whenever I get the chance.

BBiotechMedRes (Hons)

I studied my Bachelor of Biotechnology and Medical Research at my home-state University of Tasmania from 2013 to 2016, graduating with a major in Neurobiology. Over the course of this degree I was lucky to work in neuroscience, stem cell and cancer-centric research groups, the latter of which I would continue with. Inspired by my time volunteering for the Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour Disease research group, I pursued my Honours study under the supervision of Dr. Andy Flies, investigating the structure and function of Fc receptors in the Tasmanian devil.

MSc Infectious Diseases and One Health

Spreading my wings, I migrated to Europe for an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master's programme in Infectious Diseases and One Health. This afforded me the opportunity to study at the Université de Tours (Tours, France), the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain), and the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, UK). For my final research project, I worked in the lab of Prof. Xavier Donadeu and Dr. Cristina Esteves at The Roslin Institute. My thesis centred on estabishing an immune profile of pig mesenchymal stem cells between cultures and disease states.

PhD Integrated One Health Solutions

Following a brief reprieve in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic, I returned to commence my PhD studies in Integrated One Health Solutions: a new 4-year programme established jointly between the Leiden University Medical Center (Leiden, The Netherlands) and the University of Edinburgh. My project focuses on the use of augmented host defense peptides to combat antimicrobial resistance. Over a year and a half in Leiden, I tested our novel therapeutic in 3D infection models of skin and airway epithelium. I have now migrated to Edinburgh for the remainder of my project, where I am advancing our therapeutic into a novel in vivo model, the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). In Leiden, I am supervised by Dr. Peter Nibbering and Prof. Pieter Hiemstra, and in Edinburgh by Prof. Julia Dorin, Prof. Donald Davidson, Prof. Marc Vendrell, and Prof. Will Wood. My current work in Drosophila is supervised by Dr. Jenny Regan, and Dr. David Duneau.

Publications

Augmenting host defence peptides to combat antimicrobial resistance:
- Lennard, P.R., Hiemstra, P.S., Nibbering, P.H. (2023). Complementary Activities of Host Defence Peptides and Antibiotics in Combating Antimicrobial Resistant Bacteria. Antibiotics, 12(11), 1518. https://doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics12101518


- van Gent, M.E., Reijden, T.J.K. van der, Lennard, P.R., Visser, A.W. de, Schonkeren-Ravensbergen, B., Dolezal, N., Cordfunke, R.A., Drijfhout, J.W., Nibbering, P.H. (2022). Synergism between the Synthetic Antibacterial and Antibiofilm Peptide (SAAP)-148 and Halicin. Antibiotics, 11, 673. https://doi.org/10.3390/ANTIBIOTICS11050673.

One Health:
- Thomson, D.J., Ma, D., Lennard, P.R., Ferri, M. (2023). Evaluation of a global training program in One Health communication. One Health & Implementation Research, 6, xx. https://doi.org/10.20517/ohir.2023.12.

Tasmanian devil facial tumour disease:
- Flies, A.S., Darby, J.M., Lennard, P.R., Murphy, P.R., Ong, C.E.B., Pinfold, T.L., Luca, A.D., Lyons, A.B., Woods, G.M., Patchett, A.L., De Luca, A., Lyons, A.B., Woods, G.M., Patchett, A.L. (2020). A novel system to map protein interactions reveals evolutionarily conserved immune evasion pathways on transmissible cancers. Science Advances, 6, eaba5031. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aba5031.

- Flies, A.S., Darby, J.M., Murphy, P.R., Pinfold, T.L., Patchett, A.L., Lennard, P.R. (2020). Generation and Testing of Fluorescent Adaptable Simple Theranostic (FAST) Proteins. BIO-PROTOCOL, 10, 1–51. https://doi.org/10.21769/bioprotoc.3696.

- Wong, C., Darby, J.M., Murphy, P.R., Pinfold, T.L., Lennard, P.R., Woods, G.M., Lyons, A.B., Flies, A.S., 2020. Tasmanian devil CD28 and CTLA4 capture CD80 and CD86 from adjacent cells. Developmental & Comparative Immunology, 115, 103882. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.11.145789.


Contact

Address

Centre for Inflammation Research
Institute for Regeneration & Repair
University of Edinburgh
4-5 Little France Drive
Edinburgh
EH16 4UU

Email

p.r.lennard@gmail.com

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