MRC Career Development Award for Dr Sam Wilson
Dr Sam Wilson has recently been awarded a prestigious MRC Career Development Award. These highly competitive fellowships provide five years' support for outstanding post-doctoral researchers who wish to consolidate their research skills and make the transition from post-doctoral researcher to independent investigator.
Over the next five years, Dr Wilson will use this fellowship to establish his own laboratory focussed on the identification and characterization of novel antiretroviral interferon stimulated genes.
The Elliott Group arrives in Glasgow
Basma Bahsoun is from Lebanon and joined the Elliott group as a postdoctoral fellow in 2010. She obtained her PhD from Imperial College London working on the role of vaccinia virus gene K7R in evasion of innate immunity in the laboratory of Geoff Smith. She is trying to establish a reverse genetics system for hantaviruses.
Angela McLees is from Port Glasgow and studied at Napier University, Edinburgh. She has been laboratory manager of the Elliott group for 11 years. When the group moved to St Andrews University in 2005 she helped establish, and subsequently managed, the Level 3 Containment laboratories.
Ingeborg van Knippenberg is from the Netherlands, where she obtained her PhD at Wageningen University working on transcription and replication of Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus (a bunyavirus). She joined the Elliott lab in 2006 and her work has focused on the role of the NSs protein in bunyavirus replication.
Sophie Jegouic is from France and has been postdoctoral researcher in the Elliott group since 2011. She did her PhD at the Institut Pasteur (Paris) studying genetic recombination and viral emergence amongst Human Enterovirus species C. She is currently halfway through an EMBO Long-Term Fellowship, which was awarded to investigate the role of lipids in bunyavirus replication.
Elina Koudriakova was born in Moscow and grew up in Yorkshire. She joined the Elliott group in 2008 as a research technician after obtaining her BSc in Human Biology at Leeds Metropolitan University. From October she will be a full-time PhD student studying hantaviruses and innate immunity.
Agnieszka Szemiel comes from Poland, where she studied for BSc and MSc degrees at the University of Gdańsk. After completing her PhD in the Elliott lab in 2010, studying Bunyamwera virus in mosquito models, she has stayed as a postdoc working to establish hantavirus reverse genetics.
Ben Brennan (UK) joined the Elliott group in 2008 as a post doc, having obtained his PhD from the University of Surrey. His work focuses on phleboviruses, in particular Rift Valley fever virus, and the newly emerged phleboviruses in China and the US.
Steve Welch is from the UK and joined the group as a PhD student in 2010, to study the replication of Rift Valley fever virus in mosquito cells. Prior to this he worked for the HPA at Porton Down and with KEMRI/Wellcome Trust in Kenya focusing on infectious disease and diagnostic epidemiology.
Xiaohong Shi obtained an MD/PhD from the Chinese CDC in Beijing and joined the Elliott group as a postdoctoral fellow 1994. His major research interests concern the processing bunyavirus glycoproteins, and virus maturation and assembly.
Gillian Slack is from Glasgow and is a 2nd year PhD student working on innate immune responses to bunyaviruses. She has a BSc from the University of Edinburgh and was awarded an MSc in Molecular Medical Microbiology from the University of Nottingham while working for NHS Scotland. She is also a state registered Clinical Scientist in Microbiology and has part I membership of the Royal College of Pathologists.
Natasha Tilston-Lunel is originally from the UK, but grew up in India and has a BSc from Bangalore University (2007), and a MSc from Brunel University (2008). After posts in the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Blizard Institute of Cell and Molecular Science, London, she joined the Elliott group in October 2012 as PhD student studying Oropouche virus and the host innate immune system.
Ping Li, originally from China, obtained her PhD in virology in Glasgow in 2005, and then joined the Elliott group when it moved to St Andrews. Her postdoctoral research focuses on the structural and functional analysis of bunyavirus proteins, particularly the nucleoprotein and NSs protein.
Prof Richard Elliott joins the CVR
On 1st March, Prof Richard Elliott will join the MRC Centre for Virus Research at the University of Glasgow as the new Bill Jarrett Chair of Infectious Diseases.
This is an exciting return to Glasgow for Prof Elliott who first joined the former MRC Virology Unit in 1981. Prior to this, Richard obtained his PhD from the University of Oxford and spent two years undertaking postdoctoral training with Prof Peter Palese at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.
In 1986, Prof Elliott was awarded an MRC Senior Non-clinical Fellowship which he held until 2005 when he was appointed Professor of Molecular Virology at the University of Glasgow. In 1998, Prof Elliott was appointed Joint Head of Division of Virology at the university, a position he held until 2005 when he assumed the position of Professor of Virology in the Centre for Biomolecular Sciences in St Andrews University's School of Biology.
In 2012, Prof Elliott’s standing as one of the world’s leading arbovirologists was recognised with a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award. These highly prestigious, and competitive, awards are designed to fund visionary science which is likely to have a major impact on our understanding of key aspects of biology and pathology. This award will support Prof Elliott’s laboratory over the next seven years to continue their work on molecular analyses of arbovirus-host interactions. Professor Elliott’s research programme focuses on Bunyaviruses, a large family of viruses including both human and animal pathogens, almost exclusively transmitted by insect vectors (arthropod borne viruses “arboviruses”). Prof Elliott’s overall vision is to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the molecular biology of bunyavirus replication that will ultimately lead to new methods of control, prevention or treatment for bunyavirus disease. Like other groups of arthropod-transmitted viruses, bunyaviruses are responsible for severe morbidity and mortality throughout the world. They cause diseases ranging from febrile illness and encephalitis to fatal haemorrhagic fevers and approximately 30% of all infectious diseases that emerged globally between 1990 and 2000 were caused by arboviruses.
We are delighted to welcome this outstanding virologist back to Glasgow and to the CVR where his research programme will significantly enhance many of the core activities of the Centre.
18th Glasgow Virology Workshop
The 18th Glasgow Virology Workshop was held on Sat 2nd Feb at the Western Infirmary Lecture theatre. We enjoyed interesting and stimulating presentations from our outstanding invited speakers: Philip Cohen (University of Dundee), Friedemann Weber (University of Marburg), Stan Lemon (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Stacey Efstathiou (University of Cambridge), and Richard Elliott (University of St Andrews).
Many thanks to all who joined us at the workshop; we hope you had an informative and enjoyable day.
A special note of thanks to Prof Roger Everett, the organising committee, Sandra, Anne and Fiona for all their hard work in helping to make the day such a resounding success.
STOP-HCV stratified medicine research consortium funded by MRC
On 10th December 2012, the Prime Minister announced a £10.6 million investment by the Medical Research Council in three new stratified medicine research consortia, including STOP-HCV.
STOP-HCV is a hepatitis C consortium led by the University of Oxford, which will develop cutting-edge gene sequencing technologies to find out why 30 per cent of people fail to respond to a new type of hepatitis treatment called direct antiviral therapy. The group of 14 academic institutions and eight industry partners will use a state-of-the-art clinical database and a bio-repository of blood samples from hepatitis C infected people that has been established by HCV Research UK — a multi-disciplinary collaborative enterprise funded by a £1.92m grant from the Medical Research Foundation and based at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research. This information will help the STOP-HCV consortium to decipher the genetic makeup of both the virus and the patient and draw this information together to improve patient care.
Congratulations to Dr John McLauchlan and Dr Emma Thomson, CVR co-applicants in STOP-HCV.
Congratulations to Dr Ben Hale
Dr Ben Hale has recently been awarded a prestigious Sir Henry Dale Fellowship. These highly competitive fellowships are jointly funded by the Royal Society and the Wellcome Trust and are awarded to outstanding postdoctoral scientists to enable them to establish their own independent research programme addressing important biological questions.
Over the next five years, Dr Hale will use this fellowship funding to pursue his research programme focussing on the interplay between influenza viruses and host ubiquitin signalling.
TWiV broadcasts from the CVR
On the 14th of June, Professor Vincent Racaniello recorded his highly entertaining and informative podcast "This week in virology" (or "TWiV" as it is more widely known) in the Centre for Virus Research. Vincent joined colleagues from the CVR (Prof Massimo Palmarini, Dr John McLauchlan, Dr Emma Thomson) and Dr Hande Harmanci from the World Health Organisation's Global Hepatitis Programme to discuss hepatitis C virus (HCV). While HCV is a significant pathogen amongst the intravenous drug user communities in the UK, globally, HCV is a common sexually transmitted viral infection and is now thought to kill more people in the USA than HIV. During the podcast, Vincent touched upon the value of research on animal viruses to informing our understanding of human diseases with Massimo Palmarini, including a discussion on the mechanism of cellular transformation by Jaagsietke Sheep Retrovirus (JSRV). Later in the day, Vincent took the opportunity to meet with post-doctoral researchers and students, conveying his enthusiasm for virology and a career in science. Their discussion was also recorded as a TWiV podcast.
TWiV 188: Haggis, single malt, and viruses
TWiV 189: Five postdocs in Glasgow
Sir Michael Stoker CVR Award Lecture 2012
On Wednesday 13th June 2012(3.30pm Sir Alexander Stone LT), the Centre for Virus Research will host the Sir Michael Stoker Award Lecture to be given by this year’s recipient Professor Vincent Racaniello (Higgins Professor of Microbiology & Immunology, Columbia University, New York) entitled "Antagonism of innate immunity by picornaviruses".
Prof Racaniello joined Columbia University in 1982 and over the years his research interests have included poliovirus, echovirus, enterovirus 70, rhinovirus, and hepatitis C virus. His current research activities are focussed on picornaviruses, specifically the interaction of these viruses with the innate immune system, viral pathogenesis, and viral discovery in wild animals. In 2008, Prof Racaniello established This Week in Virology (TWiV - http://www.twiv.tv/) a popular podcast about viruses which aims to produce informal yet informative conversations about viruses which are accessible to everyone, no matter what their science background. Prof Racaniello also authors Virology Blog, a weblog about viruses and viral disease (http://www.virology.ws/).
Dr Robert Gallo visits the CVR
Dr Robert (Bob) Gallo will visit the University of Glasgow on 26th October 2011 and deleiver a presentation entitled “A Journey with Viruses and Blood Cells”. Since 1996, Dr Robert C Gallo has been Director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University Of Maryland School of Medicine. Previously (for 30 years) he was at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, MD. While at NCI, he and his co-workers discovered interleukin-2 (Il-2) in 1976. Il-2 was one of the first cytokines (“messenger” molecules that allow cells to communicate and alter one another’s function) and proved to be a major tool not only for immunology but also for the discovery of all human retroviruses. Gallo and his colleagues then opened and pioneered the field of human retrovirology with the discovery of the first human retrovirus (HTLV-1) and along with Japanese investigators showed it was a cause of a particular form of human leukaemia. A year later he and his group discovered the second known human retrovirus (HTLV- 2). Dr. Gallo and his colleagues also independently discovered HIV, and provided the first results to show that HIV was the cause of AIDS. They also developed the life saving HIV blood test. In 1986 he and his co-workers discovered human herpes virus-6 (HHV-6), the first new herpes virus found in more than 25 years and the cause of Roseola. In 1995 he and his colleagues discovered the first endogenous inhibitors of HIV, namely some of the beta chemokines. This discovery helped in the later discovery of the HIV co-receptor, CCR5, and opened up entire new approaches to treatment of HIV disease.
Dr. Gallo has been awarded 29 honorary doctorates, is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine, and a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He is also the recipient of numerous scientific honours and awards. Dr. Gallo was the most cited scientist in the world 1980-1990, according to the Institute for Scientific Information, and he was ranked third in the world for scientific impact for the period 1983-2002. He has published close to 1,300 papers.
Pupils get hands-on with the CVR
For the past six years staff at Glasgow Science Centre, working in partnership with scientists from the Medical Research Council (MRC) - University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR), have been delivering a series of practical workshops on DNA technology to Advanced Higher Biology pupils. Hundreds of pupils continue to attend from across Scotland and enjoy the opportunity to learn modern molecular biology techniques as part of a hands-on workshop at Glasgow Science Centre.
Read the full article in the Nexxus Scotland, Autumn 2011 newsletter.
10,000 Hepatitis C patients could hold the key to better treatment
The Medical Research Foundation, an independent registered charity established by the MRC, has donated nearly £2 million to establish a clinical database of 10,000 patients infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV). This will enable a UK-wide network of researchers to find new ways to tackle the deadly infection,1 February 2011 more...
Glasgow's Centre for Virus Research receives £4.8 million
The Medical Research Council - University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research has been awarded £4.8million from the Wellcome Trust and the Wolfson Foundation, it was announced today, Thursday 1 July more...
The Sir Michael Stoker CVR Award Lecture at the MRC - University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research
On Wednesday 1st June, the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR) hosted the inaugural Sir Michael Stoker CVR Award Lecture. This award is named in honour of Sir Michael Stoker, CBE MD FRCP FRS, who was Professor of Virology at the University of Glasgow from 1958 to 1968 and Honorary Director of the MRC Virology Unit. This was the first Chair of Virology to be established at any British university. Sir Michael's tenure in Glasgow was a hugely productive time with more than 200 papers published from the Unit. Among his many achievements during his time in Glasgow, Michael Stoker, and his colleague Ian Macpherson, isolated the first cell line transformable into a tumour cell (BHK21). The isolation of BHK21 cells led to many exciting discoveries concerning the fundamental properties of transformed cells, such as loss of anchorage dependence and contact inhibition. The BHK21 cell line was also of great practical value, becoming the substrate of choice for the production of the foot and mouth disease virus vaccine at Pirbright. Stoker left Glasgow to become Director of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories in London, and was subsequently President of Clare Hall, Cambridge. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1968, a CBE in 1974 and was knighted in 1980. Sir Michael now lives in Cambridge and will soon celebrate his 94th birthday.
The Sir Michael Stoker CVR Award Lecture is an annual competition organised entirely by the CVR’s postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers who vote for an outstanding scientist whom they consider has made a major contribution to virology. We were delighted to welcome Professor Michael Malim, FRS, King's College London, as the first recipient of this award. Professor Malim spent the day meeting with postdoctoral researchers and postgraduate students of the CVR before accepting the Stoker Award and delivering a most informative and insightful lecture entitled: 'Exploiting replication deficiencies to illuminate HIV:host interactions’.
We were also very pleased to be joined on the day by Sir Michael’s son, Chris Stoker, who spoke of his father’s appreciation at having this award named in his honour, his enthusiasm for the way in which the award is made and the exemplary leadership shown by the CVR’s younger researchers.
Isabelle Dietrich wins the ABCD & Merial Young Scientist Award 2011
The ABCD and Merial Young Scientist Award 2011 was presented to Isabelle Dietrich MRes, a PhD student at the Center for Virus Research of the University of Glasgow (UK), on 25 June in Vienna, on the occasion of the congress of the International Society of Feline Medicine.
Isabelle Dietrich (28) received the award for her work on a potential gene therapy for cats infected with the feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), based on restriction of the virus with a synthetic feline TRIM5-CypA fusion protein. “In our study, we confirmed that such a protein was highly efficient at preventing FIV infection in vitro”. A TRIM-Cyp-based gene therapy approach for FIV-infected cats “would offer an effective antiviral defense strategy with a very low potential for toxicity and the emergence of resistant viral variants, and would contribute significantly to animal welfare”, she explained.
The award was presented by Professor Marian C. Horzinek, Founding chairman of the European Advisory Board on Cat Diseases (ABCD), who congratulated the laureate. “Isabelle Dietrich has contributed to the knowledge of feline infectious diseases by a series of studies of high quality and originality. Her research into the intracellular defense mechanism offers a novel insight into the potential control of an often devastating disease”. Isabelle had been selected “with flying colours” from a pool of “very good candidates”, he added.
Isabelle’s work was also “of major importance” in the field of human viral diseases like AIDS, recalled Jean-Christophe Thibault, Merial’s Technical Director for Biologicals (Europe, Middle East and Africa), “As a leading animal health company, Merial is very proud to be associated to this prestigious European award, in association with a recognised expert group such as the ABCD.” He also thanked the organisers of the ISFM congress, which was “the most appropriate venue for presenting this award”, created to “highlight key research in the field of feline medicine”.
The ABCD and Merial Young Scientist Award, created in 2008, is funded by Merial and is presented to a young scientist in veterinary or biomedical sciences, who has made an original contribution in the field of feline infectious diseases and/or immunology. Applicants should have published their findings in a journal listed in PubMed or Web of Science or have had them accepted by another recognised assessing body.
Candidates should be based in Europe, have completed a veterinary or biomedical curriculum, and be under 35 years of age at the time of application. Applications in the fields of both basic and applied sciences are welcome.
For further information, please contact Karin de Lange, ABCD secretary, karin.delange@abcd-vets.org