St Mary’s Infection & Immunity Seminars (hybrid)

join us for the Spring/Summer Series

Biography – Dr Micah Luftig

Prof Micah Luftig is Vice-Chair of the Department of  Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University School of Medicine, and Director of the Duke Center for Virology. After a BSc in Microbiology at Louisiana State, where he studied herpesvirus glycoprotein, he moved to Harvard for a PhD under Elliot Kieff, graduating in 2003 after studying how the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) oncorotein LMP1 activates NFKB, and investigating the protein of EBV visions. Micah then moved to Pomenza, Italy, working with Andrea Carfi on an EMBO long term postdoctoral fellowship, performing structural studies on glycoproteins of HIV and herpesviruses, including one he had crystallised as an undergraduate! He also began studies of the host response of B cells to EBV infection, and in 2007 began his lab at Duke, where he continues to study the molecular determinants of B cell transformation by EBV.

Micah’s work has investigated how EBV influences proliferation, DNA damage response, metabolism, innate immune responses and differentiation of the infected B cells. In this talk, Micah will show how embracing the heterogeneity of EBV infection outcomes at the single cell level has identified new host factors that regulate EBV infection and also how our high resolution studies implicate a newly appreciated B cell subset associated with multiple sclerosis.

Please join in person;
G64, Ground Floor, Medical School, St Mary’s Campus

and online:
Microsoft Teams
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Meeting ID: 360 000 021 442
Passcode: vwESkw