CVR scientist awarded prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship

Published: 19 October 2020

Future Centre for Virus Research scientist Dr Adam Fletcher is the recipient of a prestigious UK Research and Innovation-funded Future Leaders Fellowship award of £1.2million for work on COVID-19.

A head and shoulders shot of Dr Adam Fletcher in the lab

Future Centre for Virus Research (CVR) scientist Dr Adam Fletcher is the recipient of a prestigious UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)-funded Future Leaders Fellowship award for work on COVID-19.

Future Leaders Fellowships is a £900million fund designed to help to establish the careers of world-class research and innovation leaders across UK business and academia.

The scheme supports early career researchers and innovators with outstanding potential in universities, UK registered businesses, and other research and user environments.

The support, which is funded for four years, will enable each fellow to tackle ambitious and challenging research and innovation and develop their own careers.

Dr Fletcher, who will be joining our Centre for Virus Research in the coming months, has been awarded £1.2million.

He studies host-virus interplay and the ubiquitin system, a key regulatory of the human anti-viral response.

In this fellowship, Dr Fletcher will look at how the ubiquitin system is moulded by viruses, including pandemic flu viruses and coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV-2.

Viruses infect us by expertly re-wiring our cells – often doing this by manipulating the ubiquitin system. Some viruses, like the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, even encode their own ubiquitin system enzymes to subvert host cell physiology.

The hope is this work could inform new and much-needed kinds of antiviral therapy to treat these viruses.

Dr Fletcher said: “In this fellowship, I’m excited to assimilate my understanding of host-virus interplay and ubiquitin biochemistry into the CVR’s holistic view of virology.

"By understanding how ubiquitin landscapes are moulded by viruses – including pandemic influenza viruses and coronaviruses – we will uncover a blueprint for how viruses exploit us and how our cells retaliate.

"This could inform different kinds of antiviral therapy, sorely needed as viral epidemics become a new reality.”

Dr Fletcher's UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship award is one of three made to the University of Glasgow, with awards to Institute of Cancer Sciences pair Dr David Bryant and Dr Joanna Birch, taking the total to £3.4m in funding.

A total of 101 research and innovation leaders, based at UK universities and businesses, were announced as recipients of Future Leader Fellowships on Thursday 15 October. 

Announcing the successful fellows at the Future Leaders Conference, Science Minister Amanda Solloway said: “We are committed to building back better through research and innovation, and supporting our science superstars in every corner of the UK. 

“By backing these inspirational Future Leaders Fellows, we will ensure that their brilliant ideas can be transferred straight from the lab into vital everyday products and services that will help to change all our lives for the better.” 

The UK Research and Innovation Chief Executive, Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, said: “Future Leaders Fellowships provide researchers and innovators with freedom and support to drive forward transformative new ideas and the opportunity to learn from peers right across the country. 

"The fellows announced today illustrate how the UK continues to support and attract talented researchers and innovators across every discipline to our universities and businesses, with the potential to deliver change that can be felt across society and the economy."

 


Enquiries: ali.howard@glasgow.ac.uk or elizabeth.mcmeekin@glasgow.ac.uk / 0141 330 6557 or 0141 330 4831

First published: 19 October 2020