Nicholas Svitek

Nicholas Svitek

Senior Scientist in Molecular Virology and Immunology

Dr Nicholas Svitek is a microbiologist specializing in virology and immunology, with a strong focus on innate and cellular immunology, molecular virology, and bacteriology. With a career spanning over a decade at ILRI, Nicholas has been at the forefront of ground-breaking projects, including utilizing artificial intelligence and recombinant viral vectors to induce partially protective cellular immune responses against the parasite Theileria parva, the causative agent of East Coast fever (ECF). Notably, he contributed to successfully harnessing the CRISPR-Cas technology to genetically engineer the African swine fever virus for attenuation as a vaccination strategy. Nicholas's expertise has also been instrumental in assessing immune responses to vaccination against Rift Valley fever and peste-des-petits-ruminants viruses. Since 2019, he has been leading at ILRI several projects with a total budget responsibility of over 3M US$. Among those, is a One Health project on using bacteriophages as an alternative to antibiotics to reduce drug-resistant nontyphoidal Salmonella in poultry farms in Kenya. During his capacity as co-principal investigator on this project, he led a team that successfully isolated Salmonella-specific phages that were further characterized and included in a prototype phage cocktail in collaboration with the Université Laval. More recently, Nicholas has been leading the development of CRISPR-powered pen-side biosensing tests for cattle pathogens, alongside leading a project to uncover immune and cellular mechanisms conferring tolerance to T. parva in cattle and a project on developing a phage-based product to tackle mastitis. Prior to joining ILRI, he was investigating morbillivirus immunosuppression mechanisms in ferrets and orthoreovirus mechanisms of infection. His work has resulted in more than 70 research outputs, including 30+ peer-reviewed scientific publications in journals such as the Journal of Immunology, Journal of Virology and Nature Partner Journals, and 40+ papers presented at international scientific conferences.

Nicholas holds a BSc degree in Microbiology and Immunology and an MSc degree in Molecular Virology from the University of Montreal (Canada), as well as a PhD degree in Virology and Immunology (2010) from the INRS-Centre Armand-Frappier Santé Biotechnologie-University of Quebec (Canada), a member institute of the "Institut Pasteur International Network." He also completed Postdoctoral training in Virology at the Emerging Infectious Diseases Programme at Duke-NUS (Singapore) and in Cellular Immunology and Reverse Immunology (Immunoinformatics) at ILRI (Kenya), a Certificate of training in Genome Engineering & CRISPR-Cas Technology at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Germany, and is an EMIB candidate at ESCP Business School. Nicholas is Canadian.

#EastCoastFever , #AfricanSwineFeverVirus , #BluetongueVirus , #RiftValleyFeverVirus , #AMR , #Bacteriophages , #Morbilliviruses

Publications: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4539-5806

 

My Projects

Close-up of goat teat, woman milking into a tin cup

ACTIVE

Goat Health: Harnessing Bacteriophages for Mastitis Prevention in Kenya (GO HEAL MASTITIS)

Women and men animal health service providers standing in an arid area near a flock of goats and sheep in Isiolo County, Kenya

Scaling improved strategies for Rift Valley fever vaccination in livestock in eastern Africa

My Publications

Novel CRISPR-Cas-powered pen-side test for East Coast fever

  • Muriuki, Robert
  • Ndichu, M.
  • Githigia, S.
  • Svitek, Nicholas

Diversity of Salmonella enterica phages isolated from chicken farms in Kenya

  • Gunathilake, K.M.D.
  • Makumi, Angela
  • Loignon, S.
  • Tremblay, D.
  • Labrie, S.
  • Svitek, Nicholas
  • Moineau, S.

Gender-responsive design of bacteriophage products to enhance adoption by chicken keepers in Kenya

  • Campbell, Zoë A.
  • Njiru, Nelly
  • Mhone, Amos L.
  • Makumi, Angela
  • Moineau, S.
  • Svitek, Nicholas
ILRI publication cover

Testing a pool of antigens for protection against African swine fever virus using viral vectors

  • Steinaa, Lucilla
  • Svitek, Nicholas

Co-deletion of A238L and EP402R genes from a genotype IX African swine fever virus results in partial attenuation and protection in swine

  • Abkallo, Hussein M.
  • Hemmink, Johanneke D.
  • Oduor, Bernard
  • Khazalwa, Emmanuel M.
  • Svitek, Nicholas
  • Assad-Garcia, N.
  • Khayumbi, Jeremiah
  • Fuchs, W.
  • Vashee, S.
  • Steinaa, Lucilla

Deletion of the CD2v gene from the genome of ASFV-Kenya-IX-1033 partially reduces virulence and induces protection in pigs

  • Hemmink, Johanneke D.
  • Khazalwa, Emmanuel M.
  • Abkallo, Hussein M.
  • Oduor, Bernard
  • Khayumbi, Jeremiah
  • Svitek, Nicholas
  • Henson, Sonal P.
  • Blome, S.
  • Keil, G.
  • Bishop, Richard P.
  • Steinaa, Lucilla