As the influenza virus continues to claim up to half a million lives every year and poses a major worldwide health threat, vaccines remain the cornerstone of prevention. Vaccines must be reformulated each year, however, to respond to circulating and new viruses. Sometimes, these viruses from the wild bird population mutate and move into man causing disease. The recent scares involving the so-called avian viruses in Asia and associated high mortality risk have driven a search for new ways of combating the virus.
While the anti-influenza drugs, Relenza and Tamiflu, have both been billion dollar successes for pharmaceutical giants Roche and GSK, the virus can mutate to become drug resistant.
At St Andrews, Garry Taylor's group has developed a new approach to preventing influenza by targeting the human respiratory tract and preventing the virus from entering cells and causing infection. Working with the group of Dr Robert Webster, one of the world’s top experts on influenza at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, they have developed a preventative drug that could be used as a frontline defense in both pandemic and epidemic scenarios.
Garry Taylor
BSc in Physics, PhD in Biophysics, both at the University of London (1972-1978)
Postdoctoral research in London (1978-1982) and Oxford (1982-1989).
Lecturer to Professor at University of Bath (1989-1999).
Professor of Molecular Biophysics at University of St Andrew (1999 - )
Director of the Centre for Biomolecular Sciences at St Andrews (1999-2009)
Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 2005
Head of School of Biology at St Andrews (2011-2014)
Master of the United College, University of St Andrews (2014- )
The Master is line manager to all 18 Heads of Schools and works alongside the Principal and Deputy Principal.