Dr Michael A Skinner
Vaccine Vector Group, Section of Virology
Chair of the Poxviridae Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, ICTV (2009 - ).
Founding member of Wellcome Trust-funded UK HIV Vaccines Consortium (UK HVC), coordinator Prof Jonathan N Weber.
Member of the Pool of Experts for the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council's (BBSRC) Research Committees.
Member of the Health & Safety Executive's (HSE) Scientific Advisory Group on Genetic Modification (Contained Use) [SACGM(CU)] (2004- ).
SACGM(CU)-co-opted member of HSE Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens Working Group on a Single regulatory framework for work with human and animal pathogens (2008-2009).
Society for General Microbiology Virus Group Committee (2000-2003).
Journal of General Virology Editorial Board (1994-1997, 2009- ).
Public Understanding of Science events: School talks and Cafés Scientifique, including at Science Oxford, broadly on Emerging viruses and Recombinant vaccines.
My group moved to the Department of Virology (Faculty of Medicine) at Imperial, St Mary's Campus, in 2005. We are currently working on:
- improved recombinant Fowlpox virus FP9 vaccines against avian influenza H5N1, to be tested against H5N1 in poultry at the Institute for Animal Health (IAH) (BBSRC-funded)
- avian innate immunity, in particular the antiviral type I interferon system, and viral mechanisms to modulate the host responses (BBSRC-funded, in collaboration with Prof. Steve Goodbourn, St George's University of London)
My scientific background is in the molecular biology of human viral pathogens, specifically:
• HIV (tat/TAR interactions, at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge),
• poliovirus (analysis of the role of secondary structure of 5' non-coding RNA in neurovirulence and vaccine attenuation, using: bioinformatics, in vitro structural analysis and reverse genetics; with Prof Jeff Almond, in Leicester then Reading)
• coronaviruses, in the pre-SARS era (with Prof Stuart Siddell, then in Würzburg, Germany).
I strengthened my interest in virus vaccines at IAH, studying:
- avian poxviruses (their molecular biology & as candidate recombinant vaccine vectors)
- a novel retrovirus (Avian leukosis virus subgroup J)
- a birnavirus ('very virulent' Infectious bursal disease virus)
- with funding from the BBSRC, the EC, the British Egg Marketing Board Research and Education Trust and Oxxon Pharmaccines. There, we also collaborated with Prof Adrian Hill & Dr Sarah Gilbert (University of Oxford) on the use of FP9 as a recombinant vector for malaria vaccination in humans.
