Rate My Professor Julian Naglik

Professor Julian Naglik is Professor in Fungal Pathogenesis and Immunology in the Centre for Host-Microbiome Interactions at the Faculty of Dental, Oral and Craniofacial Sciences, King’s College London. He graduated with a BSc from the University of East London in 1992 and obtained his PhD from King’s College London in 2001, where his research focused on the expression of secreted aspartyl proteinases in the fungal pathogen Candida albicans. He joined King’s College London as Lecturer in 2006, was promoted to Reader in 2013 and to Professor in 2016. Prior to these appointments, he served as a visiting research scientist at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, Germany, and at the University of California, San Francisco, USA.

Professor Naglik’s research centres on host-fungal interactions and mucosal immunity, with a particular emphasis on Candida albicans. His laboratory has developed in vivo transcript profiling methods from clinical samples, identified epithelial signalling pathways that distinguish commensal from pathogenic forms of C. albicans, and discovered candidalysin, the first cytolytic peptide toxin identified in any human fungal pathogen and a key driver of epithelial damage and signalling during mucosal infections. Candidalysin is patented in the USA and Europe. His work has been supported by the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, and National Institutes of Health. He has served as an associate or academic editor for several journals and has received awards from King’s College London, the German Mycological Society, the Heinz Maurer Prize, and the German Society for Hygiene and Microbiology. In 2015 he was elected an Honorary Member of the British Society of Medical Mycology, and in 2024 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.