Where we are
Where we are
Where we are
We are an academic research lab based in the Centre for Immunobiology and Infection in the Blizard Institute, Queen Mary University of London. The Blizard Institute is a multidisciplinary institute with research spanning infection and immunology to neuroscience, trauma and epigenetics
Who we are
Where we are
Where we are
We are an interdisciplinary mix of microbiologists, immunologists, bioinformaticians, nutritionists and clinicians interested in host-microbiome interactions in pregnancy and early life. We work together on projects to understand how our host microbes influence maternal and child health
What we do
Where we are
What we do
We use human studies (observational cohorts and large clinical trials) as a platform to study mechanisms of host microbiome interactions in pregnancy and early life. This includes large-scale metagenomics and metabolomics analyses with microbiology and primary human cell culture
Current Team Members
Holly Eldridge
Holly Eldridge
Holly Eldridge
Holly is a paediatric nurse and has extensive experience caring for children in A&E. Holly runs the NESTED study, consenting parents and their children, taking samples and managing study records.
Amy Coulson
Holly Eldridge
Holly Eldridge
Amy is a PhD student on the COaCT doctoral training programme. Amy's project will combine bioengineering with microbiology to build a vagina organ-chip model. She will use this in vitro model to test how the vaginal microbiome contributes to preterm birth using clinical samples and isolates.
Serife Ozsoy
Holly Eldridge
Catarina Da Silva Campos
Serife is a Research Assistant working on the NESTED study. She has a background in microbiology and immunology and is conducting 16S rRNA sequencing and bacterial culturing to identify microbiome signatures and bacterial strains that are associated with risk of upper respiratory tract infections in young children starting nursery.
Catarina Da Silva Campos
Coming soon (2026): Postdoc
Catarina Da Silva Campos
Catarina is an M.Sc student in Medical Microbiology. For her dissertation, she is culturing bacterial isolates from nasopharyngeal swabs from children in the NESTED study and examining their potential as probiotics to prevent upper respiratory tract infections
Coming soon (2026): Postdoc
Coming soon (2026): Postdoc
Coming soon (2026): Postdoc
Coming soon! We will have a new computational postdoc starting on the COMBI study to conduct multi-omics analyses to identify microbiome and immune signatures that predict preterm birth