November 2021
Welcome Oenone and Dagny
New undergraduates students in the lab this month to work on projects concerning antibody control of reactivation and ex vivo manipulation of NK cell identity. The second project is a title that Matt R never thought he would even consider.
New Review
Do you have questions about HCMV pathogenesis and were just too afraid to ask? Not a problem anymore. Check out Paul and Matt's review in Nature Microbiology Reviews.
Congrats Steph!
Everyone likes an upgrade and so congrats to Steph who has been allowed to continue to study for a PhD. Watch this space for all the answers to BK!
October 2021
Welcome Ana and Welcome back Ines
We welcome Ana Lankina to the lab (BBSRC;LiDO) who will use in silico approaches to study important antibody targets of HCMV gB and we welcome back Ines (BBSRC;LiDO) who will study HCMV reprogramming of CD34+ cells during latency and lessons we can learn about myelopoiesis. Get cracking!
July 2021
We are moving....
...but not very far. Our new home is open and it is right next to the hospital. Check out the new Institute of immunity & Transplantation
Matt Chair-Elect for Virology Division, Microbiology Society
Matt has been invited to serve as Chair of the Microbiology Society Virology Division from 2023. He takes up the post as Chair-Elect (2021) before taking over the reigns from current incumbent Jo Parish (Birmingham).
May 2021
Matt Chair-Elect for Virology Division, Microbiology Society
Matt has been invited to serve as Chair of the Microbiology Society Virology Division from 2023. He takes up the post as Chair-Elect (2021) before taking over the reigns from current incumbent Jo Parish (Birmingham).
April 2021
Welcome to Ines, Callum and Rahinat
We welcome Ines (PhD student) and MSC students Callum and Rahinat to the lab. They will be working on various aspects of HCMV cell biology including haematopiesis, miRNA control of HCMV latent infection and tissue immune responses. Looking forward to the next few months
Microbiology Society Meeting
It's that time again - it's the annual Microbiology Society meeting (SGM in old money). Matt R is co-responsible for organising and wil chair the DNA virus workshop. This in no way impacted on the decision to allow Matt and Calum to talk about their work.
HCMV/HSV latency giant lab meeting
The Reeves lab attended and presented at the Giant lab meeting initiated by Rob Kalejta and Donna Neumann (Wisconsin) and fantastically organised by trainees from a number of laboratories around the world including Matt from UCL. A great initiative in these times and it may well become a fixture in the calendar as it is great to talk about new ideas in the lab meeting setting rather than the more polished stories presented at conferences.
March 2021
New papers!
Congratulations to Matt on the acceptance and publication of his manuscript detailing the use of an ELISA based assay as a surrogate measure of the neutralising antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein. Matt has driven this project forward along with UCL colleagues Claire, Meg and Tabi and collabroators at HSL (Mike and Wendy) and Sussex (Ed Wright). Well done to everyone involved and also for the support of this work through the philanthropic support of the UCL Coronavirus fund.
Also congratulations to our collaborators in Cambridge (Mark Wills and John Sinclair) who have just had their study concerning viral recruitment of T cells that promotes reactivation. The work has been accepted in Frontiers of Immunology.
New SARS pre-print
Also take a look at new work we were involved with and also supported by the UCL Coronavirus fund.
This was a Team UCL effort led by Joe Grove along with Samuel Dicken and Matt M. It suggests that SARS-CoV-2 Spike hasnt achieved its full potential yet but perhaps more reassuringly does suggest that antibodies against original SARS-CoV-2 are active against the UK variant. The vaccine should still work!
February 2021
Welcome Oliver
We welcome Oliver Thomas to the lab who is joining us for a PhD rotation project to identify candidate molecules important for the establishment of latency utilsiing a miRNAome analysis we have performed. Oliver is on the MRC Birkbeck PhD programme.
January 2021
New Paper!
Congrats to our collaborator, Gary McLean at London Met who has had his study of IgA responses to gB of HCMV accepted in Immunology. A really nice piece of work that involved Meg, Josh and Ariane from our lab and demonstrated IgA antibodies against HCMV gB are potent neutralising antibodies and, intriguingly, are present at very high levels in breast milk. Implications for passive immunisation from mother to child. Well done Saima (lead author) and all.