Cassie Modahl is a group leader in the Centre for Snakebite Research and Interventions at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM). She has been studying toxinology internationally (USA, Singapore and now in the UK) for more than 15 years and is known in the field for her expertise in omic (genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic) approaches to profiling venoms and functional characterisation of toxin activities.

Cassie started working with venomous snakes and venoms as a zookeeper at the Kentucky Reptile Zoo, one of the largest collections of venomous snakes in the USA. She then completed her PhD at the University of Northern Colorado, where she characterised novel neurotoxins from understudied snake species and profiled venoms using a combination of high-throughput transcriptomics and proteomics. She spent five years as a postdoctoral research fellow at the National University of Singapore, continuing venom-omic work and expanding into vector biology, leveraging these same techniques to understand vector and virus interactions. Cassie joined LSTM in 2021 and holds a joint appointment in the Tropical Disease Biology and Vector Biology departments.

Cassie’s research involves characterising snakebite pathology, developing new therapeutics for snakebite envenoming, and engineering toxins for vector control. Her current research focuses on utilising technologies, which include 3D organotypic (static and dynamic organ-on-a-chip models) and ex vivo human skin models, to better characterise venom and toxin activities, and the use of these models to evaluate novel therapeutics for snakebite.

Additionally, Cassie is interested in the use of venom gland organoids for in vitro toxin production.

Cassie is one of the snake venom research theme leads throughout the MSc Tropical Disease Biology modules at LSTM.

 

She enjoys supervising PhD students and students interested in pursuing doctoral research in areas of her expertise.