Hosted by the School of Medicine at Cardiff University
Register on Evenbrite
How do pandemics arise? SARS-CoV-2 took us by surprise. We need to understand better how a virus from animals adapts to the human host, and in particular how viruses are transmitted through the air between people. Influenza is the paradigm of a respiratory virus with pandemic potential. How close are we to the next influenza pandemic?
Biography: Prof. Wendy Barclay, CBE, is Action Medical Research Chair in Virology and Head of Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College London. She graduated from Cambridge University and had undertaken her PhD at the Common Cold Unit, Salisbury, studying the human immune response to rhinovirus. She acquired molecular virology skills as a postdoctoral fellow first at Reading and then working at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York.
Prof. Barclay's expertise is in the field of respiratory viruses, in particular influenza viruses. Her studies aim to understand the molecular and cellular basis of the pathogenesis, host range restrictions and transmissibility of influenza viruses. The approach includes the generation of recombinant viruses with defined mutations. This strategy has contributed to the production of novel influenza pandemic vaccines. In principle, the work employs the most appropriate virus strains and relevant cell or animal models. Translational aspects include analysing mode of action and resistance mechanisms of antiviral compounds, and characterization of novel cell substrates and attenuated virus backbones for influenza vaccines.. She currently leads a consortium of virologists G2P-UK to investigate the consequence of genetic variation in SARS-CoV-2.