I’m a clinical research fellow and veterinary surgeon in the new Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases (CITIID) on the Biomedical Campus. Over the past few months I have divided my time between CITIID, and volunteering in the Department of Virology as part of the COVID-19 Genomics Consortium.
My initial role in the COVID-19 pandemic was related to diagnostics. I gained experience of testing patient samples for viruses during the Ebola outbreak in 2015 in Sierra Leone, so when COVID-19 cases started rising in the UK I volunteered to help the Public Health England lab in Addenbrookes. From there I joined Professor Ian Goodfellow’s team working to sequence full genomes of the virus from patients across East Anglia. As case numbers are being brought under control I’ve been able to transition back to virus research, which aims to improve our understanding of coronavirus immunity.
My research usually focuses on the antibody response to viruses. This means it hasn’t been too large a leap to extend my research to include coronaviruses. We need to determine how coronavirus-specific antibodies are working, in order to find out what the ‘ideal’ antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 is. This will be valuable for development of effective vaccines and for identification of people that may be susceptible to repeat infections.
Image: Sarah Caddy
Credit: Sarah Caddy
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge