Dr Hossam Gewaid
Research Fellow, Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute
- Research Institute:
Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute
- Contact e-mail:
- Thematic Area:
Therapeutics/ Vaccine Studies
Research Profile:
Hossam completed his PhD in Molecular Virology from the Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan). During his PhD, supervised by Prof. Takaji Wakita and Prof. Hiediki Aizaki, Hossam analysed the role of sphingomyelin in the structure and biogenesis of membrane replication vesicles induced by HCV. He has recently joined Prof. Andrew Bowie’s Lab as a postdoctoral researcher. He will explore the viral/host interaction mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 focusing on the innate immune response and evasion mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2.
COVID-19 Project:Investigating innate immune detection of SARS-CoV-2 in order to inform the design of novel therapeutics
This project will establish and utilise cell culture infection models for SARS-CoV-2 in order to test the effects of novel and repurposed therapeutics on SARS-CoV-2 replication, and on virus-elicited cytokine and interferon responses. Further, there is an urgent need to more fully understand the innate immune response of epithelial and myeloid cells to the virus, for example in order to understand how a cytokine storm develops. Therefore, we will specifically explore how such cells detect SARS-CoV-2 and what type of cell death, cytokine and interferon responses ensue upon viral infection. We will determine which innate immune pattern recognition receptors and inflammasomes, and which signalling pathways, are used by host cells to detect SARS-CoV-2, and compare these to other respiratory RNA viruses in order to more fully understand SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis.
