Mohamed Elghazaly

Our first Virtual Virology at QMUL! Three great speakers from my lab @melghazaly.bsky.social on Vpx and immune activation, @immun0liver.bsky.social on SARS and ADP-ribosylation, and @ali-hashim.bsky.social on transforming natural products into broad spectrum anti-virals. Excited for the next VV!

Excited to share that the Towers Lab have moved from UCL to the @blizardinstitute.bsky.social. As such, I’ll be continuing working on #virology and #epigenetic regulation of #immunity from the Blizard! I look forward to meet new colleagues and continue working on great science. Get in touch!

A modified cyclosporine enhances lentivector transduction ex vivo and in vivo by degrading IFITM3 Intrinsic innate immune barriers have evolved to suppress viral infection and can reduce effective gene delivery in gene therapy. We have developed BG147, a novel cyclosporine A analogue, optimised vi...

New preprint from our lab, led by our postdocs Dara Annett and Kate Morling in collaboration with Selwood Lab!

We developed a modified cyclosporine, BG147, which enhances lentivector gene therapy transduction, ex vivo in HSPC and in vivo in mouse photoreceptors, by degrading IFITM3. Check it out!

Delighted to have won a Wellcome Discovery Award for 8 more years of transformative research. We will advance our knowledge of innate immune mechanisms using viruses and chemotherapeutics as tools.

Thanks to everyone who contributed along the way.

Blizard Institute welcomes world-leading team of virologists

We are delighted to be joining the Blizard Institute in Autumn. The Blizard Institute is an amazing place for discovery science and we're looking forward to more transformative research and collaborations.

www.qmul.ac.uk/blizard/abou...

Virtual Virology 2 July - Three Pirbright PIs. Do join us

Our last (but not least) selected speaker for today is @immun0liver.bsky.social @ucl.ac.uk with a great talk on how ADP-ribosylation poses an important barrier to infection that viruses like SARS-CoV-2 have to overcome. #LINEsymposium2025

Towers Lab attending @londoninfectionecr.bsky.social (LINE) annual symposium. Great talk lineups at the Francis Crick Institute, London. #LINE #ScienceIsCool.

Huge thanks to the fantastic organizers @codendall.bsky.social, @peterwshill.bsky.social, Vincenzo Torraca, and @jwanford.bsky.social for putting together such an outstanding event. I can’t wait to attend more UK Cellular Microbiology conferences!

It was wonderful to reconnect with familiar faces and meet new researchers in the microbiology field. I particularly enjoyed sharing this experience with my amazing virology teammates in the @towerslab.bsky.social, @ziqizhou.bsky.social and @tomdubois.bsky.social who presented excellent posters.

What an absolute privilege it was to be invited to speak at #UKCellularMicrobiology @KingsCollegeLon!

Having attended this conference for years as a Salmonella biologist, it was really special to come back this time as a Virologist. #AcademicLife #CellularMicrobiology #Research

Thanks Matt! Your talk was amazing! ⭐️ Jaws were dropped during your presentation 🤩

Really great talk by @melghazaly.bsky.social from @towerslab.bsky.social in #CSH #Retroviruses !

And of course, no CSH meeting is complete without the famous lobster dinner!

Huge thanks to the organisers for putting together such an incredible meeting. I’m returning with lots of ideas, and a deeper appreciation for the retrovirology community. I also made some new friends along the way.

I was particularly inspired by the keynote lecture by David Baltimore, a Nobel Prize Winner at the age of 37, and the discoverer of reverse transcriptase that quite literally changed the world.

I got to share my research, learn so much from the amazing talks and thought-provoking conversations with experts in the field.

I had the great honour of being invited to speak at the Cold Spring Harbor Retroviruses Meeting in New York last week!

#CSHRetroviruses #Retrovirology #Research

So inspiring just listening to a keynote lecture at Cold Spring Harbor by David Baltimore, a Nobel Prize Winner at the age of 37, and the discoverer of reverse transcriptase that quite literally changed the world. #CSHLRetro

Virtual Virology is back - our first ever phage session. Do join us...

Thanks to everybody who made it to our seminar yesterday (IRL and remotely)! It was great to hear about their exciting science from @oscart32.bsky.social and @melghazaly.bsky.social. See you very soon at our symposium or the next seminar!

Come next Wednesday at 5pm at #UCL to listen to @oscart32.bsky.social and @melghazaly.bsky.social share their science and have a drink with us after!

The event is hybrid to cater for availability and capacity, so if you cannot make it in person, join us online!

🚨INCOMING! Join us for our next LINE seminar (9th of April) at UCL. We are excited to host @oscart32.bsky.social and @melghazaly.bsky.social to hear about metagenomics in diagnostics and how host/pathogens battle it out! As always: Followed by a networking social! Register here: shorturl.at/kGmfh

Macrocycle-based PROTACs selectively degrade cyclophilin A and inhibit HIV-1 and HCV - Nature Communications Targeted protein degradation has so far been rarely applied as an antiviral strategy. Here, the authors report that macrocycle-based PROTACs targeting host protein cyclophilin A, exploited during vira...

Happy to announce that our 2nd paper of 2025 is out! 🎊

This collaboration between our brilliant postdoc @lsnewton.bsky.social and @claragathmann.bsky.social, from Dave Selwood’s chemistry lab, designs and employs PROTACs to degrade CypA and inhibit HIV and HCV.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Early events in the HIV life cycle.

First paper of 2025 is out now! 🎉

Our talented postdocs @katemorling.bsky.social and @melghazaly.bsky.social review latest advancements of how HIV capsid and accessory proteins Vpx/Vpr have evolved (or not) to regulate host innate immunity.

www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Very proud to have collaborated with @katemorling.bsky.social on this review as my first contribution to the virology field. Looking forward to more exciting work with @towerslab.bsky.social!