The CrickConnect team are delighted to be able to invite community members to join us for the institute's regular Crick Lecture.

Crick Lectures provide a broad insight into biomedical research from leading scientists. Not to be missed, the one-hour lectures are the event of the week for the Crick community to come together. The lectures aim to be accessible to scientists across different disciplines, while also offering something for the specialist.

There is also an opportunity to catch up with colleagues and friends over refreshments after Crick Lectures from 17:00. If you are able to join us in person at the Crick please let us know at connect@crick.ac.uk so we can arrange access.

Principal Group Leader Andreas Wack gives this week's Crick lecture. Andreas runs the Immunoregulation lab at the Crick.

The Immunoregulation lab is finding out why lung infection with viruses such as influenza or SARS-CoV-2 cause only mild symptoms in some people, while in others the infection can be severe and even deadly. Both seasonal outbreaks and worldwide pandemics of these respiratory viral infections are major public health threats, with the potential of causing millions of deaths and a standstill of society.

Andreas's current research interests at the Crick include the understanding of pathogenesis and protection in respiratory viral infection and viral-bacterial coinfection of the lung. He is interested in the immune response to infection and how it impacts on damage and repair of lung epithelia and endothelia. Lastly, his group studies how these acute infections affect lung immunity long-term, well beyond the resolution of the ongoing lung insult. To address these questions, the lab uses human and murine primary organotypic epithelial cultures and immune cells, as well as in vivo infection models.

 Andreas Wack was born in Frankfurt, studied biology in Konstanz and got his first degree based upon a thesis on the clonal composition of T cell populations in the elderly. He completed his PhD work at the MRC NIMR  (now part of the Francis Crick Institute) under the supervision of Dimitris Kioussis on thymocyte lineage decisions and went on to do a postdoc and work as a staff scientist and Group Leader in the research institute of Novartis Vaccines in Siena, Italy.

Andreas moved his lab to the Crick in 2015.