Research Goal

In Prodger lab, we focus on understanding the complex interactions between host tissues, the immune system, and microbial communities, with an emphasis on translational research in infectious diseases and mucosal immunology. We develop innovative systems to study how bacteria and viruses interact with epithelial and immune cells. This multidisciplinary approach bridges cell biology, immunology, and microbiome research, with the ultimate goal of improving prevention and treatment strategies for human health.
Our first research goal is to understand natural resistance/susceptibility to HIV-1. Penile anaerobic bacteria can increase HIV-1 risk, but the exact species and mechanisms underpinning this risk are unknown. Our group is working to illuminate these, to develop targeted antimicrobials to prevent HIV-1.
Our second goal is to understand the unique barriers to curing individuals living with HIV-1 in sub-Saharan Africa. HIV-1 remains incurable due to the stable integration of viral DNA into the host genome. We are working to characterize persistent HIV-1 infection in Uganda, and plan to test HIV-1 cure strategies as they become available.

 

 

 

Partners

 

Rakai Health Sciences Program (RHSP)

RHSP collaboration with Prodger lab

 

Uganda has about 1.4 million people living with HIV, and 37,000-53,000 new infections annually. Uganda pioneered Africa's national AIDS program in 1986—supported by pioneering work from the Rakai Health Sciences Program (RHSP), which established one of the world's first population-based HIV cohorts—dramatically reducing the rates from over 20% in the 1990s through behaviour change and antiretroviral therapy (ART) scale-up, including a 64% drop in AIDS deaths since 2010. In Prodger Lab, we collaborate with the RHSP, a key Uganda-based group advancing HIV research and services. We aim to contribute to an HIV cure by targeting the latent reservoir and the microbiome-immune interactions to develop novel prevention and treatment strategies.

 RHSP website: https://www.rhsp.org/ 

 

 

Women's College Hospital (WCH)

Womens collage hospital WCH

Women’s College Hospital (WCH) in Toronto hosts Canada’s first publicly funded hospital-based Transition-Related Surgery (TRS) Program, launched in 2019 to provide essential gender-affirming surgeries. In Prodger Lab, we collaborates with WCH TRS on innovative research, such as characterizing neovaginal microbiomes post-vaginoplasty to improve outcomes for transfeminine individuals. Our goal is to advance reproductive health and gender-affirming care through microbiome-immune system insights. Check out our TransBiota Facebook page for more information about these studies!

WCH website: https://womenscollegehospitalfoundation.com/ 

TransBiota news: https://www.facebook.com/share/1BzAKAjpVh/?mibextid=wwXIfr 

 

 

 

Featured publications

 

Estimating HIV-1 Viremic Time from Reservoir Sequence Diversity with Uncertainty Quantification

Authors: Edward N Kankaka, Stephen Tomusange, Taddeo Kityamuweesi, Gabriel Quiros, Nicholas DiRico, Adam A Capoferri, Owen Baker, Erin E Brown, Jernelle Miller, Sharada Saraf, Charles Kirby, Briana Lynch, Jada Hackman, Craig Martens, Thomas C Quinn, Eileen P Scully, Amjad Khan, Art FY Poon, Jessica L Prodger, Ronald M Galiwango, Steven J Reynolds, Andrew D Redd

Description: Accurate estimation of HIV viremic time is valuable for understanding reservoir dynamics, and informing cure trials. Traditional approaches rely on serological assays or CD4 counts, which can lack quantitative precision. Sequence-based estimates using diversity in pre-treatment plasma RNA address this limitation, but are increasingly limited in the era of immediate ART initiation. Source

 

Experiences and evidence of transfeminine people’s challenges with chronic, recurrent neovaginal malodor: a cross-sectional qualitative study

Authors: Ainslie C Shouldice, Reeya Parmar, Hannah Wilcox, Aleena Ghafoor, Jorge Rojas-Vargas, Emery Potter, Deborah Penava, Jacques Ravel, Jessica L Prodger

Description: Penile inversion vaginoplasty, which uses penile and scrotal skin to surgically create a neovagina, is a medically necessary gender-affirming surgery for some transfeminine individuals. Much like cisgender women, roughly a third of transfeminine individuals who have undergone vaginoplasty report having experienced bothersome neovaginal malodor in the past 30 days. However, sources of neovaginal malodor remain unclear. This study sought to collect data on odour quality and characterize the experiences of transfeminine individuals with neovaginal malodor. Source

The Futility of Nugent Scoring as a Diagnostic Tool for Neovaginal Bacterial Dysbiosis in Transfeminine People

Authors: Jessica Prodger, Reeya Parmar, Bern Monari, Emery Potter, Jorge Rojas-Vargas, Hannah Wilcox, David Zuanazzi, Annabel Poon, Ainslie Shouldice, Vonetta Edwards, Yonah Krakowsky, Jacques Ravel

Description: Transfeminine people were assigned male at birth and experience a female or feminine gender identity. Many elect to undergo vaginoplasty, a surgical procedure that constructs a neovagina, typically using penile and scrotal tissue. Like cisgender females, transfeminine people experience gynecological symptoms, including pain, discharge, and malodor. In cisgender females, clinicians attribute these symptoms to bacterial dysbiosis and can be diagnosed by Nugent scoring of gram-stained vaginal smears. The Nugent score assesses the abundance of large gram-positive rod vs. small or curved gram-variable rod morphotypes, traditionally for the detection of Lactobacillus spp., Gardnerella vaginalis , and Mobiluncus spp. (curved rod), respectively. Although unvalidated for neovaginal samples, this method is frequently applied to diagnose dysbiosis in transfeminine people with vaginoplasty. 
Source

Survival and transmission fitness of SARS-CoV-2 over the time-of-flight in an aerosolization chamber

Authors: Yiying Zhang, Justin M Donovan, Dylan W Weninger, Victor Lam, Richard Gibson, Steven Renaud, Daniel Paquette, Alex Lescanec, Cody Hird, Christopher T DeGroot, Jessica L Prodger, Franco Berruti, Eric Savory, Eric J Arts

Description: The impact of various environmental factors on SARS-CoV-2 transmission remains debated, partly due to limited physical experiments with infectious virus that closely replicate real-world conditions. Using a novel, self-contained containment level 3 chamber, we aerosolized the virus in different environmental conditions then collected droplets on nasal tissue, cell lines, or different materials to measure the transmission of infectious SARS-CoV-2. We found that SARS-CoV-2 survival was much shorter than previously reported for the potential of fomite transmission. Temperature, relative humidity and the presence of incinerated tobacco, cannabis, or vape products had no discernible impact on SARS-CoV-2 transmission through aerosolized droplets, but affected the survival of VSV, a non-respiratory enveloped virus. When compared to USA-WA1/2020 and the Omicron variant, Delta SARS-CoV-2 had the greatest … 
Source

Penile microbiomes have important implications for HIV susceptibility and broader reproductive health

Authors: Rameen Jamil, Jessica L Prodger, Ronald M Galiwango, Cindy M Liu, Aaron AR Tobian, Rupert Kaul

Description: HIV is a major public health issue, with almost 40 million people currently living with HIV and 1.3 million new infections reported in 2024 [1]. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) accounts for over 50% of global cases, despite the considerable success of prevention programmes in the region [1]. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with antiretroviral medications reduces the risk of sexual HIV acquisition by over 90%, but rollout in SSA has been slow due to barriers such as stigma, high cost, lack of health infrastructure and low individual awareness of risk [2]. In addition, political pressures mean that global treatment and prevention programs are currently under great threat. Human cohort studies and animal models have shown that genital inflammation is a key determinant of HIV susceptibility in both men and women [3]. Proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines recruit HIV-target cells to the mucosa, including activated CD4+ T … Source

 

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