Carol Munro | Professor
University of Aberdeen

Carol Munro has a personal chair in Microbiology at the Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Aberdeen and is leader of the Microbiology & Immunity Research Theme (Microbiology and Immunity). She is co-founder and CSO of Brigid Biologics (Brigid Bio), designing and developing next generation immunotherapies for life-threatening drug resistant fungal infections (PMID 35285676). Carol is senior member of the Aberdeen Fungal Group and has over 25 years research experience investigating human fungal pathogens. Her research focusses on how fungal cell surface components contribute to virulence, host interactions, antifungal drug tolerance and resistance. Her research initially focussed on studying cell wall chitin synthesis and glycosylation, dissecting at the molecular level contributions of specific genes to cell wall synthesis. More recently she has focussed on the cell wall proteome, gaining an understanding of how the cell surface is altered in response to antifungal therapies. She has also generated genome-wide molecular resources Candida albicans ORFeome and overexpression mutant libraries. Over the years Prof Munro’s group have worked with a number of anti-infectives companies through industrial-funded studentships, Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and fees-for-service contracts. Carol, with partners at the Scottish Biologics Facility, has developed novel biologics-based antifungal therapeutics that target the fungal cell wall. The team has received funding from Scottish Enterprise and UKRI Innovate UK ICURe programme for pre-clinical development of the antifungal antibodies. Prof Munro has published 140 scientific publications, book chapters and reviews (ORCID: 0000-0003-0761-1755) with patents filed on the Antibody Discovery Platform. Prof Munro has an H-index of 60 and her work has been cited 16,000 times. She has raised >6M USD with current funding support from BBSRC, EU, Scottish Enterprise, and industrial sponsorship. She has mentored over 20 PhD students and 30 MSc or MRes students to completion