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SUMMARY:The virus host and virus genetics of severe influenza infection - 
 Paul Kellam\, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
DTSTART:20140509T120000Z
DTEND:20140509T130000Z
UID:TALK51425@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Tennie Videler
DESCRIPTION:Paul Kellam is the Viral Genomics group leader and Senior Inve
 stigator at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and a Professor of Viral P
 athogenesis at UCL. Paul has a degree in Microbiology from Reading Univers
 ity and a PhD investigating HIV drug resistance from the Wellcome Foundati
 on laboratories and Imperial College\, London. At the Wellcome Foundation\
 , Paul’s research on HIV identified essential reverse transcriptase (RT)
  mutations conferring drug resistance to zidovudine (AZT) leading to deter
 mining how the combinatorial development of multiple mutations leads to hi
 gh-level resistance to antiviral drug regimes. This also led to the first 
 use of capillary sequencing of HIV to detect minority drug resistance vari
 ants in patients. In 1996 Paul joined Robin Weiss’s laboratory at the In
 stitute of Cancer Research to work on Kaposi’s sarcoma associated herpes
 virus (KSHV). There Paul’s KSHV research identified the virus Latent Nuc
 lear Antigen (LANA) and developed a monoclonal antibody to LANA that is ma
 rketed worldwide\, being used for the identification of KSHV latently infe
 cted cells. This antibody was used to show definitively that KSHV is assoc
 iated with all forms of Kaposi’s sarcoma\, Primary Effusion Lymphoma (PE
 L) and a plasmablastic variant of Multicentric Castleman’s disease. Paul
 ’s laboratory developed the first KSHV gene expression microarray to exp
 lore virus lytic replication and pioneered the use of virus bioinformatics
  and host gene expression arrays to characterise herpesvirus driven B-cell
  tumours. This identified the B-cell differentiation transcription factor\
 , X-box binding protein-1 (XBP-1) as the host transcription factor that sw
 itches KSHV from latency to the virus lytic cycle. In 2009 Paul establishe
 d the Virus Genomics laboratory at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute whi
 ch investigates genetic variation of host and virus to determine the molec
 ular and pathogenic outcomes of virus infections. In particular the labora
 tory uses next generation sequencing of virus and human genomes in people 
 infected with HIV\, influenza virus\, norovirus\, and human herpesviruses.
  Recently\, we identified the first human influenza disease severity deter
 mining allele\, IFITM3 in people hospitalised with pandemic influenza A H1
 N1. Paul’s laboratory combines molecular biology and virology with compu
 tational research to address basic biological questions in infection and i
 mmunity and has worked closely with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in charact
 erising the genetics of MERS-CoV.
LOCATION:MPLT\, MRC-LMB\, Francis Crick Avenue\, Cambridge Biomedical Camp
 us\, CB2 0QH
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