Margarida Castro Gomes Spencer

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is driven by microorganisms, such as bacteria, evolving mechanisms to resist antibiotics (also called antimicrobials), threatening modern medicine by making it harder to treat infections. As the current antibiotics are becoming ineffective and the search for new ones has its challenges, we need to find innovative ways to tackle the problem of AMR. My research aims to boost the natural infection-fighting abilities of innate immune cells—our body's first responders—so we can rely less on antibiotics. To be able to mimic the complex immune responses in a higher organism, we use zebrafish larvae to model the host-pathogen interactions during infection.

[2025] Shigella-trained pro-inflammatory macrophages protect zebrafish from secondary infection MC Gomes, D Brokatzky, S Mostowy Cell reports 44 (5) [2025] Proximity biotinylation at the host-Shigella interface reveals UFMylation as an antibacterial pathway. ATL Jimenez, F Thery, K Wright, H Painter, ST Hoffmeister, L Jarche, ... bioRxiv, 2025.05. 29.656827 [2024] Septins promote macrophage pyroptosis by regulating gasdermin D cleavage and ninjurin-1-mediated plasma membrane rupture D Brokatzky, MC Gomes, S Robertin, C Albino, SL Miles, S Mostowy Cell Chemical Biology 31 (8), 1518-1528. e6 [2023] Shigella induces epigenetic reprogramming of zebrafish neutrophils MC Gomes, D Brokatzky, MK Bielecka, FC Wardle, S Mostowy Science Advances 9 (36), eadf9706 [2023] Zebrafish null mutants of S