From the director

In CII, we tackle well known diseases, such as HIV/AIDs and diabetes, and those that have historically received limited attention by governments, funding agencies and the world’s media (the ‘neglected tropical diseases’). We provide an intimate link between Biology and Medicine, rarely seen in long-established medical schools, and the Centre today results from a strategy that ensures we maximise the quality and impact of our research.

Funding from the University, the Hull York Medical School and charitable foundations provided the infrastructure required to support world-class research. The technological base available to us, in a range of core facilities across campus, rivals that available anywhere in the UK, particularly for imaging-based research. We have appointed rising stars to many of our core academic positions, each with proven excellence in their discipline, yet with an appetite for inter-disciplinary research. Identifying common threads between disparate diseases often provides new insights and a synergy rarely attainable in highly disease-focussed centres.

Finally, we have fully exploited the ‘without walls’ approach that is a feature of York, to extend our research beyond traditional boundaries. Few medical research centres of our size could boast of interactions with structural biologists, plant molecular biologists, computer scientists and public health specialists! The strategy is already paying dividends. In five years, we have won ~£16M of external research funding, including multiple large programme-style grants, and our translational research is bearing fruit: we have identified a new lead compound for treating sleeping sickness; the first leishmaniasis vaccine to be developed in over a decade is poised to enter clinical trial; and a range of new HIV interventions are in an advance stage of planning. We look forward to making more fundamental discoveries in pathogen biology and immunology and to exploiting this knowledge for global health benefit.

Professor Paul Kaye
CII director

Centre for Immunology and Infection

From the director

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