Inaugural lecture of Professor David Dockrell

Chair of Infection Medicine 

Reprogramming infectious diseases from HIV to COVID

In this inaugural lecture Professor David Dockrell will discuss his career studying infectious diseases and how the immune system can be modified to develop new treatments.

Infectious diseases are a major threat to human health across the globe, as highlighted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

At the beginning of his career, HIV was emerging as a new challenge joining established infectious diseases like pneumonia, tuberculosis and malaria. At the time there was no established treatment for HIV.

Through his initial research David was able to show that during normal immune interactions certain cells are programmed to undergo cell death and that their susceptibility to this could be modified by the first combination treatments involving antiretroviral therapy.

His research has continued to focus on susceptibility to infection and macrophages, in particular how macrophages determine susceptibility to pneumonia. He has gone on to describe a novel mechanism by which macrophages kill bacteria using programmed cell death involving apoptosis.

This process varies between people and helps explain the susceptibility to pneumonia and potentially other lung infections. His work has demonstrated how viruses like influenza and HIV modify this process and how it is possible to reprogramme this response.

More broadly David's research aims to modify host susceptibility to infection, to combat antimicrobial resistance. This includes trying to reduce harmful inflammation during the response to infection.

When he started as an infectious disease physician there were limited treatment options for HIV and now we face similar challenges with COVID-19.

Experimental medicine approaches will be as important to combat COVID-19 as these other infectious diseases and are also likely to involve modifying the body’s own response to infection and reducing inflammation, something which many scientists in Edinburgh are working together to address.

This lecture is free and open to all.

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