We are recruiting!

The positions are funded by the NIH grant Antivirals Drug Discovery (AViDD) Centers, led by Nevan Krogan from the UCSF Quantitative Biosciences Institute in San Francisco. The UCL project, led by Professors Greg Towers and Clare Jolly is to characterise novel compounds identified by AViDD collaborators to have demonstrated anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity. We will compare antiviral activity against variants of concern (VOCs) and characterise their mechanisms of action. We are particularly interested in measuring whether inhibitors influence host innate immune response to infection, as may be expected when viral innate immune antagonists are targeted. The project builds on previous collaborative work between the Krogan, Jolly and Towers laboratories characterising innate immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 VOCs (Thorne et al, EMBO-J 2021, Nature, 2021) and their sensitivity to novel inhibitors (Varona et al, Life Sci Alliance, 2022).