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New insights into viral immune evasion from quantitative multiplexed proteomics

Speaker: Dr Michael Weekes, Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellow, Honorary Consultant in Infectious Diseases, Addenbrooke’s Hospital

This talk will describe the development of a variety of multiplexed proteomics approaches to study viral immune evasion, particularly focusing on human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), herpes simplex and vaccinia virus. We have found that host proteins that are degraded very early during HCMV infection are enriched in novel antiviral factors. The use of proteomics to characterise the mechanisms of protein degradation will be discussed, in particular how to identify which viral protein out of hundreds that are expressed degrades a given factor. New approaches to identify components of innate immune pathways such as the interferon pathway will be also be examined.

Speaker bio: Mike Weekes pursued his PhD and early postdoctoral research with Patrick Sissons at Cambridge University, where he worked on the cytotoxic T-lymphocyte response to HCMV in advancing HIV infection. He subsequently studied medicine at Oxford University, then specialised in clinical Infectious Diseases. He returned to Wellcome Trust-funded postdoctoral research in 2009, in Cambridge (with Paul Lehner) and at Harvard Medical School (with Steve Gygi). Since 2015 he has been a Wellcome Trust senior clinical fellow at Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, and honorary consultant in infectious diseases at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

Event details

Gowland Hopkins Lecture Theatre, Hodgkin Building
Guy’s Campus
Great Maze Pond, London SE1 1UL