Focus of our in-house research

Although with a primary focus on the biology of viruses and associated proteins particularly how they infect their host cells, in-house research interests covers a broad range of targets, including influenza polymerase and picornaviruses, from purified virus or recombinant protein, to in cell-experiments.

OPIC houses state-of-the-art biosafety containment laboratories at ACDP category 3 and DEFRA 4 levels of containment.

This facilitates the study of a number of viruses that are important to human and animal health, such as HIV and SARS-CoV2.

We welcome new collaborations!

Examples of our research

MORPHOGENS AND CELL SURFACE SIGNALLING

Christian Siebold - We seek to generate mechanistic insights relevant to disease and embryonic development focusing on morphogen signalling. We aim to unravel the molecular mechanisms underlying extracellular morphogen interactions with their receptors, how these extracellular signals are transduced inside the cell and how these mechanisms are changed in disease, especially in cancer and regeneration. Read full biography

CHARACTERISATION OF REPLICATION MACHINERY IN RNA VIRUSES

Jonathan Grimes - Unravelling the action of viral enzymes involved in transcription of dsRNA viruses is a key focus of our group, particularly the polymerase structures from dsRNA viruses such as Influenza and SARS-CoV2. We use high-throughput structural methods to contribute in a timely way to functional analysis. Read full biography

A PIPELINE FOR STRUCTURAL VACCINOLOGY

Dave Stuart - We use atomic resolution structures of viral particles to guide the design of stabilized vaccines. This ‘structural vaccinology’ approach is used for the development of a safe, synthetic stabilised virus-like particle (VLP) based vaccine for foot and-mouth disease virus and poliovirus. Read full biography

CELLULAR STRUCTURAL VIROLOGY

Peijun Zhang - We use cutting-edge cryoEM, cryoET and cryoFIB/SEM technologies to study virus infections and pathogenesis both in vitro using isolated virus particles and in situ within infected cells and tissues.  We develop new correlative and integrated multi-scale methods to advance 3DEM imaging and apply “Cellular Structural Biology” approaches to investigate HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 viruses. Read full biography