Dr. Gavin Screaton is a General Physician and MRC Senior Clinical Fellow who is working in the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the Nuffield Dept of Medicine at the time of the contract negotiation. He moved to Imperial College Immunology Department soon after the start of the Network. His research interests include alternative pre-mRNA splicing, apoptosis and the T-cell immune response to dengue virus infection. He is in receipt of an MRC strategic grant to study T-cell responses to the SARS virus.

Dr. Xiaoning Xu is an MRC Clinical Scientist who works at the MRC Human Immunology Unit at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford. His research interests include the control of lymphocyte survival and the mechanisms of immune evasion during HIV infection. Dr. Xu was born in China and has set up a number of collaborations with clinicians in Beijing and Guangzhou to collect and store clinical samples from SARS-CoV-infected patients.

Selected publications of Partner 10:

Mongkolsapaya J., Dejnirattisai W., Xu X.N., Vasanawathana S., Tangthawornchaikul N., Chairunsri A., Sawasdivorn S., Duangchinda T., Dong T., Rowland-Jones S., Malasit P., McMichael A., and Screaton G.R. 2003. Original antigenic sin and apoptosis in the pathogenesis of dengue haemorrhagic fever. Nature Med. 9:921-927.
Simon A.K., Gallimore A., Jones E., Cerundolo V., and Screaton G.R. 2002. Fas ligand breaks tolerance to self antigens and induces tumour immunity mediated by antibodies. Cancer Cell 2:315-322.
Xu X.N., Purbhoo M.A., Chen N., Mongkolsapaya J., Cox J.H., Meier U., Tafuro S., Dunbar R.P., Sewell A.K., Hourigan C.S., Appay V., Cerundolo V., Burrows S.R., McMichael A.J., and Screaton G.R. 2001. A novel approach to antigen-specific deletion of CTL with minimal cellular activation using alpha three domain mutants of MHC class I/peptide complex. Immunity 14:591-602
Simon A.K., Williams O., Mongkolsapaya J., Jin B., Xu X.N., Walczak H., and Screaton G.R.. 2001. Tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand in T cell development: Sensitivity of human thymocytes. PNAS USA 98: 58-5163.
Xu X.N., Laffert B., Screaton G.R., Kraft M., Wolf D., Kolanus W., Mongkolsapaya J., McMichael A.J., and Baur A.. 1999. Induction of Fas ligand expression by HIV involves the interaction of Nef with the T cell receptor zeta chain. J. Exp. Med. 189:1489-1496.

Dr Gavin Screaton
g.screaton@imperial.ac.uk

Dr Xiao-Ning Xu
xiaoning.xu@molecular-medicine.oxford.ac.uk