Dr Worrell highly commended by BTS
Published: 14 December 2021
Institute Research Associate Dr Julie Worrell was highly commended in the British Association for Lung Research (BALR) category at the British Thoracic Society Early Career Investigator Awards finals on 24 November 2021.
Institute Research Associate Dr Julie Worrell was highly commended in the British Association for Lung Research (BALR) category at the British Thoracic Society Early Career Investigator Awards finals on 24 November 2021.
Held during the BTS Annual Winter Meeting, the national UK respiratory medicine conference, the six BALR finalists were selected from 100s of abstracts submitted and presented their work to a panel of judges.
Dr Worrell was named as runner up for her presentation 'Reinfection with influenza A virus leads to rapid changes in immunomodulatory molecules and inflammatory subtypes of lung fibroblasts and epithelial cells'.
The recipient of a public commendation and a certificate for the placement, she said: "My work interrogates the functions and interactions of stromal and immune cell populations, in vivo following influenza virus infection.
“While the immediate responses of fibroblasts and epithelial cells to respiratory virus infection have been well characterised, few studies have investigated the longer term consequences of infection.
"These revealed that following influenza virus infection, lung fibroblasts and epithelial cells display long-term changes that could enhance the cells’ abilities to communicate with immune cells, particularly T cells.
“Understanding the long-term consequences for the virally infected lung may have implications for, or provide insight into, the management of ‘emerging respiratory viruses’ such as Covid-19.”
“I have now obtained independent seed funding to pursue this avenue of investigation, and it has led to a new collaboration with researchers at Imperial College London.”
First published: 14 December 2021