Dr Hinds completed his PhD at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, investigating targeted gene replacement in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and benefited from industrial placement and sponsorship by GSK during his first degree and PhD.

His career at St George’s started in 1999 on a “proof-of-principle” project developing DNA microarrays for the first pathogen genomes available. This expanded into BµG@S (Bacterial Microarray Group at St George’s), a multi-collaborative resource within the Wellcome Trust’s Functional Genomics Initiative, supporting a large network of international researchers working broadly in the area of bacterial pathogenesis.

Dr Hinds and team have embraced ongoing advances in genomics technology in research projects for a range of infectious diseases, particularly focused on the translational application of pathogen genomics to diagnosis, vaccine surveillance or real-time clinical investigations.

In 2014 he co-founded BUGS Bioscience, a not-for-profit spin-out company, to support roll-out and global access to molecular serotyping technology developed at St George's that has analysed over 50,000 samples from vaccine studies in more than 25 countries worldwide.

Broadly Dr Hinds research has been focused on bacterial pathogen genomics for the past 25 years, using genomics technologies, such as microarrays, next-generation sequencing and point-of-care devices, to address important questions in bacterial pathogenesis and diagnosis. A key aspect of this effort has been the translational nature of the research, applying basic research discoveries and genomic technologies to real-time problems, for example, monitoring vaccine trials or informing patient treatment.

The majority of current research activity has been developed and established over the past 10 years, using microarrays as an effective genomic tool to dissect complex asymptomatic carriage of vaccine preventable diseases. This has been built on the long-term, internationally recognised expertise in our group for microarray design, bioinformatics and pathogen genomics. Predominantly this current activity has focused on Streptococcus pneumoniae and the roll-out of pneumococcal vaccines, but parallel methods for Haemophilus influenzae and Group B Streptococcus have also been developed, the latter of which will see increasing demand in future as the first new vaccines undergo trials and potential roll-out. The pneumococcal molecular serotyping method developed in our group was shown to be the leading method for sensitive detection of multiple serotype carriage by the PneuCarriage project, a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded methods evaluation. This has lead to adoption of the methodology in vaccine studies worldwide, analysing over 50,000 samples from studies in 25 countries, emphasising the international impact and success of this research.

Ongoing and future research activity aims to apply advances in metagenomics and sequence capture technologies to develop genomic approaches for direct analysis of clinical samples. Whilst the microarray approach has been highly effective in dissecting complex clinical samples following a culture-step, it has more limited sensitivity when analysing clinical samples directly. Targeted sequence capture methodologies upstream of next generation sequencing are a natural extension to the microarray approach, utilising similar principles and bioinformatics approaches to capture and analyse DNA of interest. Initially the primary aim is to enable sensitive direct analysis of challenging clinical samples from vaccine studies, for which current culture-based microarray approaches are not ideal. However, if shown to be an effective and a robust methodology, these sequence capture methods may supersede and improve upon current microarray approaches for all samples. A secondary important aim of this future research activity is to diversify the application of sequence capture beyond vaccine studies, for example, addressing wider issues such as the surveillance of respiratory viruses or circulation of antimicrobial resistance genes. These future plans build on our recognised expertise and productive collaborations with influential partners to maximise the potential impact and translational delivery through BUGS Bioscience.

Recent Publications:

Manna S., Werren J.P., Ortika B.D., Bellich B., Pell C.L., Nikolaou E., Gjuroski I., Lo S., Hinds J., Tundev O., Dunne E.M., Gessner B.D., Bentley S.D., Russell F.M., Mulholland E.K., Mungun T., von Mollendorf C., Licciardi P.V., Cescutti P., Ravenscroft N., Hilty M. and Satzke C. (2024) Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype 33G: genetic, serological, and structural analysis of a new capsule type. Microbiol Spectr. 12(1):e0357923. http://doi.org/10.1128/spectrum.03579-23

Howard L.M., Huang X., Chen W., Liu Y., Edwards K.M., Griffin M.R., Zhu Y., Vidal J.E., Klugman K.P., Gil A.I., Soper N.R., Thomsen I.P., Gould K., Hinds J., Lanata C.F. and Grijalva C.G. (2023) Association between nasopharyngeal colonization with multiple pneumococcal serotypes and total pneumococcal colonization density in young Peruvian children. Int J Infect Dis. 134:248-255. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2023.07.007

Temple B., Tran H.P., Dai V.T.T., Smith-Vaughan H.; VPT-II Collaborator Group; Licciardi P.V., Satzke C., Nguyen T.V. and Mulholland K. (2023) Efficacy against pneumococcal carriage and the immunogenicity of reduced-dose (0 + 1 and 1 + 1) PCV10 and PCV13 schedules in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam: a parallel, single-blind, randomised controlled trial. Lancet Infect Dis. 23(8):933-944. http://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(23)00061-0

Smith-Vaughan H., Temple B., Trang Dai V.T., Hoan P.T., Loc Thuy H.N., Phan T.V., Bright K., Toan N.T., Uyen D.Y., Nguyen C.D., Beissbarth J., Ortika B.D., Nation M.L., Dunne E.M., Hinds J., Lai J., Satzke C., Huu T.N. and Mulholland K. (2023) Effect of different schedules of ten-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine on pneumococcal carriage in Vietnamese infants: results from a randomised controlled trial. Lancet Reg Health West Pac. 32:100651. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanwpc.2022.100651

Tiley K.S., Ratcliffe H., Voysey M., Jefferies K., Sinclair G., Carr M., Colin-Jones R., Smith D., Bowman J., Hart T., Kandasamy R., Hinds J., Gould K., Berbers G., Tcherniaeva I., Robinson H., Plested E., Aley P. and Snape M.D. (2023) Nasopharyngeal carriage of pneumococcus in children in England up to 10 years after 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine introduction: persistence of serotypes 3 and 19A and emergence of 7C. J Infect Dis. 227(5):610-621. http://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiac376

Nation M.L., Manna S., Tran H.P., Nguyen C.D., Vy L.T.T., Uyen D.Y., Phuong T.L., Dai V.T.T., Ortika B.D., Wee-Hee A.C., Beissbarth J., Hinds J., Bright K., Smith-Vaughan H., Nguyen T.V., Mulholland K., Temple B. and Satzke C. (2023) Impact of COVID-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions on pneumococcal carriage prevalence and density in Vietnam. Microbiol Spectr. 11(1):e0361522. http://doi.org/10.1128/spectrum.03615-22

Shrestha S., Gurung M., Amatya P., Bijukchhe S., Bose A.S., Carter M.J., Gautam M.C., Gurung S., Hinds J., Kandasamy R., Kelly S., Khadka B., Maskey P., Mujadidi Y.F., O'Reilly P.J., Pokhrel B., Pradhan R., Shah G.P., Shrestha S., Wahl B., O'Brien K.L., Knoll M.D., Murdoch D.R., Kelly D.F., Thorson S., Voysey M., Pollard A.J and PneumoNepal study group. (2022) Effect of the of 10-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in Nepal 4 years after introduction: an observational cohort study. Lancet Glob Health. 10(10):e1494-e1504. http://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(22)00281-9

Manna S., Spry L., Wee-Hee A., Ortika B.D., Boelsen L.K., Batinovic S., Mazarakis N., Ford R.L., Lo S.W., Bentley S.D., Russell F.M., Blyth C.C., Pomat W.S., Petrovski S., Hinds J., Licciardi P.V. and Satzke C. (2022) Variants of Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype 14 from Papua New Guinea with the potential to be mistyped and escape vaccine-induced protection. Microbiol Spectr. 10(4):e0152422 http://doi.org/10.1128/spectrum.01524-22

Dunne E.M., Hua Y., Salaudeen R., Hossain I., Ndiaye M., Ortika B.D., Mulholland E.K., Hinds J., Manna S., Mackenzie G.A. and Satzke C. (2022) Insights into pneumococcal pneumonia using lung aspirates and nasopharyngeal swabs collected from pneumonia patients in The Gambia. J Infect Dis. 225(8):1447-1451. http://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiaa186

Dherani M.K., Pope D., Tafatatha T., Heinsbroek E., Chartier R., Mwalukomo T., Crampin A., Mitsi E., German E.L., Nikolaou E., Solórzano C., Ferreira D.M., Swarthout T.D., Hinds J., Mortimer K., Gordon S.B., French N. and Bruce NG. (2022) Association between household air pollution and nasopharyngeal pneumococcal carriage in Malawian infants (MSCAPE): a nested, prospective, observational study. Lancet Glob Health 10(2):e246-e256. http://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(21)00405-8

Mackenzie G.A., Osei I., Salaudeen R., Hossain I., Young B., Secka O., D'Alessandro U., Palmu A.A., Jokinen J., Hinds J., Flasche S., Mulholland K., Nguyen C. and Greenwood B. (2022) A cluster-randomised, non-inferiority trial of the impact of a two-dose compared to three-dose schedule of pneumococcal conjugate vaccination in rural Gambia: the PVS trial. Trials 23(1):71. http://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-021-05964-5

Module Lead for Application of Genomics in Infectious Disease on MSc Genomic Medicine course.

Lectures for Global Health Diseases and Medical Microbiology modules for BSc and MSc courses.