SPOTLIGHT ON DR RAVINDRA GUPTA
Affiliations:
Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease (CITIID)
Research focus: HIV and more recently SARS-CoV-2
Recent advance from the lab: We recently demonstrated that Omicron has switched preference for cell types, away from lung cells towards cells that dominate the upper airway (Meng et al. Nature 2022). The Omicron spike is also very poor at inducing cell-cell fusion. We find that the tropism shift is due to inefficient use of TMPRSS2 by Omicron as an entry cofactor, that appears to correlate with cleavage of the spike protein in virus producing cells. We believe this tropism shift explains the reduced lung severity of Omicron compared to earlier variants.
Ravindra Gupta
Key challenge for the field: For vaccines to keep pace with the rapid antigenic changes in SARS-CoV-2 that are occurring due to chronic infections and rapid within host evolution as we previously reported (Kemp et al. Nature 2021).
Most exciting basic or clinical breakthrough in the past few years: Vaccines for COVID-19 have been game changing and will be responsible for saving millions of lives. In particular, mRNA technology came to the fore and revealed its potential during the pandemic.
Published July 2022