Title: Studies of two pandemic viruses: flu and COVID-19

Summary: The viruses that cause common colds are traditionally thought of as inconvenient, generally mild and untreatable. Although this is largely true, there have been two recent pandemics – one in 2009-10 (H1N1 influenza) and COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2)- both of which caused many cases of severe or fatal disease while also causing mild or even inapparent infections. The reasons for the variation in severity are increasingly well understood, in part because of studies of the immunopathogenesis during natural infection and in volunteer challenge studies. This seminar will describe studies of the host immune response to infection with respiratory viruses and the prospects for future pandemics.

Biography: Peter Openshaw, MD, PhD, is Professor of Experimental Medicine at Imperial College London, UK. Prof. Openshaw is a respiratory physician and mucosal immunologist, studying how the immune system both protects against viral infection but also causes disease. Dr Openshaw's research has been on respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza and Covid-19 is focused on the immuno-pathogenesis of pulmonary viral diseases, lung inflammation, asthma and obstructive lung disease.

He has worked on RSV and influenza since the mid-1980s, leading a large Wellcome Trust funded national collaboration: Mechanisms of Severe Acute Influenza Consortium MOSAIC (2009-12), recruiting cases of severe influenza during the influenza pandemic of 2009-2010. He has run studies of human experimental infection of volunteers for over 12 years and is Director of the MRC-funded HIC-Vac consortium, established to promote the use of human experimental infection to accelerate vaccine development. for pathogens of high global impact. He co-leads ISARIC4C https://isaric4c.net/, a UK-wide consortium established in 2020 to study the COVID-19 pandemic.

He is Theme Lead for Infection at the Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, Respiratory Infections Section Head within the National Heart and Lung Institute and an NIHR Senior Investigator. He is a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences-British Society for Immunology expert taskforce on immunology of COVID-19.

He is past President of the British Society for Immunology (2013-18) and is a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences-British Society for Immunology expert taskforce on the immunology of COVID-19. He has been a member of UK SAGE (2009-12), Chair and now vice-Chair/advisor of NERVTAG, a Department of Health committee horizon-scanning for emerging respiratory threats. He is a member of the UK Vaccine Network and several committees and Boards that oversee research on the immunology of respiratory infection. He was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for services to Medicine and Immunology in the 2022 New Year’s Honours

All welcome Zoom link