About Us

The Aspergillus Website serves many different audiences; researcher, doctor, patients & carers and those who just want to find out more about the fungus Aspergillus and the illnesses it causes – of which there are many.

The Aspergillus Website is funded by the Fungal Infection Trust (www.fungalinfectiontrust.org).

This Website is maintained by the Aspergillus Website team, based at the University of Manchester. It is linked to an important website for the support of our patients & carers communities in the UK & USA – also accessed by virtually every country in the world, providing information & awareness as well as social support.

There are also very popular online support groups for patients and carers on Facebook, and well attended groups for professionals on LinkedIn; The Aspergillus & Aspergillosis Group.

Current editors

1980-83 BSc (Genetics) at Liverpool University followed by a short period as Lecturer in Genetics at the University of Ulster (1983-84).

Postgraduate at the University of the West of England (1984-87) where I did a PhD with Professor Alan Vivian working on the molecular genetics of the specificity of the host-parasite interaction between Pea blight (Pseudomonas syringae pv. Pisi) and its natural host Pisum sativum.

Postdoctoral position with Professor John Wyke at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research (1987-91) working on putative transcriptional silencing elements present in the rat genome.

Higher Scientific Officer with John Norton at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research (1991-00) working on the biological characterisation of a small helix-loop-helix protein (Id3) cloned from human B cells.

graham.atherton@manchester.ac.uk

I have worked on the Aspergillus website and related projects since March 2000, managing it since 2001. I have extensively retrained in IT, culminating in the award of an MSc in Information Technology at the University of Liverpool in July 2005.

I set up and ran the Clinical Trials Database System at the University of Manchester (running since July 2003, completed in 2008), which was used to carry out several trials across europe. The results of one of these studies (the FAST study) has since been published – see below.

The National Aspergillosis Centre was opened in April 2009 and I have been leading the Quality of Life assessment and research program as well as the online patient support systems at the centre since its inception.

Responding to changing demands I now run a communications team at the National Aspergillosis Centre that includes a range of skills, dedicated to increasing awareness of the services offered by the National Aspergillosis Centre and the Mycology Reference Centre Manchester, awareness of chronic aspergillosis diseases and other serious fungal infections worldwide.

Publication – see Orcid entry

Past editors