News 2022
News and announcements for the Towers Lab from 2022.
Greg attended the 1st South African Workshop on SARS-CoV-2 Variants and Evolution, Nov 2022
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Greg went to South Africa to attend the '1st South African Workshop on SARS-CoV-2 Variants and Evolution' hosted by AHRI in St Lucia (SA) where he presented 'Evasion of innate immunity by SARS-CoV-2 and why we think this is important for transmission'
Pre Conference Shenanigans in South Africa, Nov 2022
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Doug's PhD paper is out in Retrovirology - 'HIV-2/SIV Vpx antagonises NF-κB activation by targeting p65', Dec 2022
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Read about this novel mechanism in 'HIV-2/SIV Vpx antagonises NF-κB activation by targeting p65'.
'Evasion of cGAS and TRIM5 defines pandemic HIV' is Published in Nature Microbiology, Oct 2022
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Ten years of work of collaborative work finally in print! What makes SIV zoonosis sometiimes lead to pandemic HIV in humans but not always. Read about the role of cGas and TRIM-5 mediated responses in pandemic human to human HIV spread.
NIH Funding for the Collaboration with the Krogan lab has been confirmed, July 2022
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The Towers and Jolly labs are part of an NIH AViDD funded international collaboration. The goal of this collaboration is to produce potent inhibitors that act against SARS-CoV-2. It’s a huge collaboration involving many international laboratories and will cover everything from inhibitor design, library screening, and investigating structure activity relationships through to detailed studies of inhibitor mechanism.
Towers Lab Picnic 2022!
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Towers lab hosted another summer picnic. Great weather, homecooked food and the traditional football made for a great afternoon.Really good to see some of our allumni too.
Delivering aid to the Polish/Ukraine border with Van-Aid, April 2022
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Our Lab manager, Jane, was one of many drivers who have taken aid to the Polish/Ukraine border with Van-Aid. Van-aid works closely with organisations in Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine such as Convents, Refugee Camps, and Orphanages and larger organisations like Project Nadiya, and Veterans Army. The aid provided is in response to specific requests from these organisations and is handed to them either via depots on Ukraine's borders with Poland and Slovakia or directly to their representatives who drive across Ukraine 13 hours and more to meet the Van-aid convoys. Our delivery was made up of food, combat boots, sleeping bags and medical supplies and went on to a small town about 40 miles south of Lviv.
Van-Aid is a very young charity having been formed in response to the war in Ukraine by a group of couriers who had been approached for help transporting aid to those in need and fleeing the war. Using vans has proved to be a powerful tool allowing aid to be delivered following a 'just in time' scheme. They can travel from the depots in the UK to those on the border in 48 hours, half the time usually taken by larger vehicles. The vans also, being smaller, have the ability to get to smaller locations - important when delivering directly to people who have to come over the border to meet us and do not always know where they will be able to cross. Van-Aid is run by volunteers. The drivers are all volunteers and the vans are often lent or sponsored by UK business.
G2P is extended, March 2022
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Funding for our work with the G2P Consortium has been extended for 12 months. UCL is one of 10 institutions working together to study newly identified variants focusing on transmission, severity of resulting COVID-19 disease and effectiveness of vaccines and treatments against these new variants. This work is used to inform Government stratagy.
UCSF hosted Greg as an invited speaker on his trip to visit our Collaborators in the Krogan Lab, Feb 2022
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Greg was invited to present his talk 'What makes a virus pandemic? HIV vs SARS-CoV2' at UCSF as part of a visit to Nevan Krogan, Lorena and the rest of his lab to build on the successful collaboration that has grown from the pandemic through Lorena.
Greg presented the Faculty of Medical Sciences Public Lecture on 8th Feb 2022 SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: What have we learned and what’s next?
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