Generously sponsored by PBL Assay Science.
GRADUATE AWARD WINNER
Jack Major
PhD Student (4th and final year), Francis Crick Institute.
Present Immunoregulation laboratory (student at Imperial College London)
Primary PhD supervisor: Dr Andreas Wack.
Jack is currently a fourth and final year PhD student in the lab of Dr Andreas Wack at the Francis Crick Institute, London. His graduate research looks at how host antiviral immune responses can be harmful during respiratory viral infection. Specifically, Jack and his co-authors found that type I and III interferons interfere with lung repair during recovery from influenza virus infection, by blocking respiratory epithelial cell proliferation and differentiation. In his infection model, he found that interferon treatment late during the course of infection exacerbates lung damage, which may have implications for ongoing clinical trials testing the efficacy of interferons in treating patients with COVID-19.
Before moving to the Crick institute, Jack completed his undergraduate degree in Immunology at the University of Glasgow, in 2015. He then remained in Glasgow for a year, working as a research technician at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Molecular Parasitology, studying the biology of the apicomplexan parasite Toxoplasma gondii.
Jack Major will give a virtual oral presentation at Cytokines 2020 Virtual Meeting in November!
