I am extremely grateful for the support of the Marie Curie fellowship, King's College London, and particularly to Professor Neil for all his help with the application. I am really excited to get going with the research and apply these powerful techniques to HIV research to help further our understanding of this virus and progress towards a cure.
Dr Laura Dunn, postdoctoral researcher
26 March 2026
King's researchers awarded postdoctoral fellowships from Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions for infectious disease research
Two researchers in the School of Immunology & Microbial Sciences at King’s College London have been awarded postdoctoral fellowships from Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, part of Horizon Europe.
Dr Laura Dunn and Dr Jamieson McDonald have been awarded over €260,000 each, over two years, to support their innovative research into infectious diseases, covering HIV latency and persistent Shigella infection.
Understanding HIV latency
Dr Laura Dunn, a postdoctoral researcher in Professor Stuart Neil’s lab, has been awarded the fellowship for her project “DELTA-HIV: Defining the Landscape of Transcriptional Activity During HIV-1 infection.”
Despite the success of antiretroviral therapy for the treatment of HIV, HIV remains incurable, with more than 40 million people worldwide living with the virus. One of the greatest challenges in curing HIV is its ability to hide within the body in a dormant state known as latency. If treatment is stopped, these hidden viruses can quickly reactivate, causing infection to rebound within weeks.
Dr Dunn’s DELTA-HIV project will investigate how HIV establishes and maintains this silent state, and what triggers the virus to become active again. Using advanced sequencing technologies, the research will track both viral and host cell activity in detail.
By identifying the molecular drivers of latency and reactivation, the project aims to inform the development of new strategies either to permanently silence latent HIV or to activate it so infected cells can be eliminated, bringing researchers closer to a cure.
Investigating persistent Shigella infections
Dr Jamieson McDonald, a postdoctoral researcher in Dr Vincenzo Torraca’s lab, has been awarded the fellowship for his project “PeRsistent Infection of Shigella in Macrophages (PRISM): Shedding light on the intra-phagocytic lifestyle of Shigella sonnei using human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived macrophages.”
Shigella is a bacterium that infects only humans and causes a severe gut infection known as shigellosis. Globally, shigellosis is estimated to affect up to 165 million people and cause more than 200,000 deaths each year. The growing resistance of Shigella to antibiotics has made it an increasing public health concern.
Recent research in people and experimental models has shown that some subgroups of Shigella, particularly Shigella sonnei, can persist in the body for extended periods. These persistent infections can lead to recurrent illness, make diagnosis more difficult, facilitate bacterial spread, and reduce the effectiveness of treatments.
Dr McDonald’s research has shown that S. sonnei can survive inside human immune cells called macrophages, challenging the long-standing view that Shigella invariably kills these cells.
The PRISM project aims to provide the first detailed view of persistent S. sonnei infection within human macrophages. By understanding how the bacterium survives in these immune cells, the research could help to support the development of improved diagnostic tools, treatments, and prevention strategies.
I’m incredibly grateful for the generous support from Horizon Europe and feel extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to pursue this research project. I am also deeply thankful for Dr. Vincenzo Torraca’s support throughout the process and for the encouragement of my colleagues at King’s. Receiving this fellowship has greatly motivated me to continue growing as a scientist, and I look forward to advancing research that addresses a critical public health threat.
Dr Jamieson McDonald, postdoctoral researcher
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