Poxvirus immune evasion strategies (360G-Wellcome-090315_B_09_A)

The objectives of this research are to understand how vaccinia virus, the prototypical poxvirus, suppresses the host innate immune response to infection, and how this impacts on virus virulence and the adaptive immune response that follows. This investigation will provide fundamental information about the host-pathogen interactions, how the innate immune response functions and influences the adaptive response, how the innate immune system can be inhibited, and how this information can be used to develop more immunogenic and safer poxvirus-based vaccines. It is also a goal to obtain co-crystal structures of the vaccinia virus proteins with their cellular binding partners to understand in molecular detail how inhibition of the innate immune system is mediated and in the long term to use this information to develop small molecule inhibitors of innate immunity that will have anti-inflammatory therapeutic value.