Our research focuses on the influenza virus neuraminidase protein as a promising target for both disease prevention and therapeutic strategies, including vaccines, drugs, and antibodies.
Research
Influenza virus remains a significant global public health concern, causing billions of infections, millions of severe cases, and thousands of deaths annually. The influenza virus has two major surface proteins: hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA), which are essential for virus lifecycle. Current influenza vaccines, updated annually, primarily target HA but provide suboptimal protection, partly because antibodies fail to recognise continuously evolving viral strains. Including NA in vaccines is a promising strategy for improving vaccine effectiveness, as antibodies against NA limit viral spread, correlate with protection, and offer broader immunity against diverse influenza strains.
Our research objectives are:
1. To identify vulnerable sites on the NA protein surface targeted by protective antibodies
2. To develop effective NA-based protein vaccines
3. To discover better drugs targeting neuraminidase
Our Team
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Pramila Rijal
Career Development Fellow
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Leiyan Wei
DPhil Student
Collaborators
Professor Kuan-Ying Arthur Huang, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Professor Yan Wu, Beijing Institutes of Life Science, China
Professor Thomas Bowden, University of Oxford, UK
Professor Elma Tchilian, The Pirbright Institute, UK
Professor Erica Ollmann Saphire, La Jolla Institute for Immunology, USA
Professor Mark Howarth, University of Cambridge, UK
FUNDING
Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Oxford Institute
Novo Nordisk Pandemic Antiviral Discovery
Townsend Jeantet Charitable Trust