News
The Towers lab has moved to the Blizard Institute, Queen Mary University of London!
New Chapter and new adventures!
The Towers and Jolly labs have moved to the Blizard Institute at QMUL. The Blizard Institute is an amazing place for discovery science and we're looking forward to more exciting and transformative research and new collaborations.
Rosetrees Trust has Awarded a Second round of Funding for Dara's TE work, June 2026
Following the success of our Rosetrees Trust funded grant 'Development of IFITM inhibitors as transduction enhancers to facilitate efficient human Stem Cell Gene Therapy' the Trust has decided to continue its support by joining with the Stoneygate Trust to fund Dara's continuing research 'Development of Improved Transduction Enhancers for ex vivo and in vivo Gene Therapy Protocols through Discovery of Underlying Mechanisms and Advancing Structure Activity Relationship Chemistry'
Team Towers attended the 1st CiViA Symposium in Denmark, May 2026
Bruno and Jay presented posters while Oliver spoke on 'SARS-CoV-2 is restricted by ADP-ribosylation-mediated innate immunity' and Greg on 'What's Special about Pandemic Viruses?'
Virtual Virology is back! Nov 2025
Towers lab presented at the first Virtual Virology in its new home at QMUL Blizard Institute
Hashim Ali - 'Transforming antiviral development through identification of broad-specificity, host-targeting antivirals'
Mohamed ElGhazaly - 'Vpr/Vpx and inflammatory snowballing: a new model for innate immune activation and sterile inflammation'
Oliver Wright - 'What is ADP-ribosylation, why do viruses reverse it and can we drug it?'
Greg has been awarded A Wellcome Discovery Award! Nov 2025
‘Innate Immune Regulation in Viral Infection and Cancer Chemotherapy’ funding for 8 years.
LINE Symposium at The Crick Institute, June 2026
Mohamed and Oliver both won prizes for their talks: Mohamed 'Viral manipulation of epigenetic regulates immune sensing' and Oliver 'SARS-CoV-2 is restricted by ADP-ribosylation-mediated innate immunity'. Ziqi won the poster prize.
Our work with a modified cyclosporine is on the BioRxiv server. Sept 2025
Our paper 'A modified cyclosporine enhances lentivector transduction ex vivo and in vivo by degrading IFITM3' is on the BioRix Preprint server. Congratulations to Dara, Kate, and our collaborators in the Selwood Lab!
Ziqi attended the UK International Coronavirus Network Conference, Liverpool July 2025
Ziqi presented 'Cellular Battlegrounds: Arabian vs African MERS-CoV in the Human Host'. Her attendance was funded by a travel grant won by Ziqi from the BBSRC
